# The National Archives (UK) Discovery

> Archival descriptions for United Kingdom. Access: Public API. Terms checked November 1, 2026.

- Slug: uk-national-archives-discovery
- Page: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/sources/uk-national-archives-discovery
- JSON: https://api.lineage.rexstjohn.com/v1/sources/uk-national-archives-discovery
- Records: Archival descriptions
- Places: United Kingdom
- Years: Not stated by the source
- Access method: api
- Key required: no
- Rate limit: Guideline of no more than 3,000 API calls per day, at no more than one request per second.
- Status: live
- Review: verified, checked by hand on 2026-11-01
- Homepage: https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
- API docs: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/terms-and-conditions/discovery-for-developers-about-the-application-programming-interface-api/
- Terms: https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/terms-and-conditions/discovery-for-developers-about-the-application-programming-interface-api/

## Notes

Offered as a beta. There is no key; access is granted by emailing webmaster@nationalarchives.gov.uk with the IP address requests will come from, so Lineage needs a fixed outbound IP before it can call it. Most catalogue data is Crown copyright under the Open Government Licence; images of records need separate permission. The API sandbox did not answer within 8 seconds on the day of review, so the health probe reads the developer page.

## Evidence

- https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/terms-and-conditions/discovery-for-developers-about-the-application-programming-interface-api/
- https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/robots.txt

## Status

Live at the last check, 2026-11-01 22:02 UTC. HTTP 200 in 433 ms. One check a day.

The Lineage research API is not live. This file describes a catalog entry only.