OpenStates

Open legislative data from all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico — bills, votes, and legislators searchable in one place.

Open source

Adequate

https://openstates.org · Reviewed 2026-04-11 · Editorial assessment by Mike Schneider — not an independent security audit

What should journalists know about OpenStates?

OpenStates is the largest open collection of US state legislative data — bills, votes, legislators, and committees from all 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico, standardized into a single searchable format. The project started as a Sunlight Foundation initiative in 2009, went through various stewards, and was adopted by Plural (a policy intelligence company) in 2021. The deal matters: Plural keeps the data open and free under a CC-0 license, and funds ongoing maintenance by selling premium features to professional policy teams. The web scrapers that collect data from state legislature websites remain open source on GitHub. The Plural app itself is proprietary. For journalists, OpenStates solves a real problem: state legislature websites are inconsistent, often poorly designed, and rarely interoperable. OpenStates normalizes the data so you can search for 'book ban' bills across all 50 states in one query. The API (v3, updated January 2026) is well-documented and supports programmatic access for data journalism. The main limitation is timeliness — data depends on scrapers that run on variable schedules, so there can be a lag between when a bill is introduced and when it appears. For real-time alerts, Plural's paid product or BillTrack50 may be better. But for free, open, bulk legislative data, nothing else comes close.

Best for

Searching legislation across multiple states simultaneously. Building datasets of state bills by keyword or policy area. Finding legislator information and voting records. Powering civic tech applications with legislative data via the API. Bulk downloading standardized legislative data for research. Tracking how model legislation spreads across states.

Not for

Real-time legislative alerts (data lags behind official sources — use Plural's paid product or BillTrack50 for that). Federal legislation (use Congress.gov or ProPublica's Congress API). Bill text analysis or legal interpretation. Lobbying and campaign finance data. Committee hearing schedules or testimony. Regulation and rulemaking tracking.

Security & Privacy

Encryption in transit Yes

Data is scrambled while being sent to their servers

Encryption at rest Unknown

Data is scrambled when stored on their servers

Data jurisdiction United States. Operated by Plural, a US-based company. The underlying legislative data is public record sourced from state government websites.

Where servers are located — affects which governments can request your data

Security rating Adequate

The public-facing openstates.org requires no account for searching and browsing. API keys require an email address. The legislative data itself is public record. Plural's privacy practices apply to the hosted platform. The open data is licensed CC-0 — no restrictions on use.

How to protect yourself:

No account required to search and browse legislation on the website. API access requires a free API key (email registration). The data is public legislative records, so no sensitivity in accessing it. For maximum independence, download the bulk data and run your own analysis rather than depending on the hosted API. Verify bill status against official state legislature websites — scraper lag means OpenStates may be hours or days behind. The open-source scrapers on GitHub can be self-hosted if you need more control over data freshness.

The data itself is public legislative records with no security sensitivity. The website uses HTTPS. No account required for basic use. The main consideration is that Plural is a commercial entity — your API usage patterns and search queries are visible to the company. For the vast majority of legislative research this is a non-issue. If you are tracking politically sensitive legislation and want no usage trail, download the bulk data instead of using the API.

Who Owns This

Owner Plural (formerly Civic Eagle). Open States data project originally created by the Sunlight Foundation.

Funding Commercially sustained. Plural funds OpenStates through revenue from its premium policy intelligence product sold to organizational customers (lobbying firms, advocacy groups, enterprises). The open data and public tools are cross-subsidized by paid features.

Business model Hybrid open-source/commercial. The legislative data is free and open (CC-0). The web scrapers are open source. Plural's premium policy intelligence platform — with AI-powered analysis, predictive analytics, and real-time alerts — is a paid SaaS product. The free tier is the community contribution; the paid tier is the business.

Pricing

Free for public use at openstates.org. API access is free with rate limits. Bulk data downloads are free under a CC-0 license. Plural (the parent company) sells premium policy intelligence features to organizational customers, but the core open data and tools remain free.

This is an editorial assessment based on publicly available information as of 2026-04-11, using our published methodology. Independent security review is pending. Security posture can change at any time. This is not a guarantee of safety.

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