# CRAN API > The R package ecosystem — CRAN, the Comprehensive R Archive Network — as an API. Look up any R package for its title, description, version, license, maintainer and author, homepage and bug-tracker links, and its full dependency tree (depends, imports, suggests, linkingTo); read a package's complete release history with publication dates; search the entire CRAN registry by keyword; and get download statistics (last day, week or month, with an optional daily series) straight from the official CRAN download logs. Covers the ~22,000 packages on CRAN, from ggplot2, dplyr and data.table to jsonlite, shiny and the wider tidyverse. Live from the official R-community services (crandb, search.r-pkg.org, cranlogs). Ideal for package dashboards, dependency and supply-chain tooling, data-science developer portals and R ecosystem analytics. Open data from CRAN. ## Authentication All requests require your oanor API key in the `x-oanor-key` header. Get one at https://www.oanor.com/developer/keys. ```bash curl -H "x-oanor-key: oanor_live_…" "https://api.oanor.com/cran-api/..." ``` ## Pricing - **Free** (Free) — 3,550 calls/Mo, 2 req/s - **Starter** ($4/Mo) — 48,500 calls/Mo, 8 req/s - **Pro** ($13/Mo) — 241,000 calls/Mo, 20 req/s - **Mega** ($34/Mo) — 1,205,000 calls/Mo, 50 req/s ## Endpoints ### CRAN #### `GET /v1/downloads` — Download statistics **Parameters:** - `name` (query, required, string) — R package name, e.g. ggplot2 Example: `ggplot2` - `period` (query, optional, string) — last-day | last-week | last-month (default last-month) - `daily` (query, optional, string) — true to include a daily series **Example:** ```bash curl -H "x-oanor-key: $KEY" \ "https://api.oanor.com/cran-api/v1/downloads?name=ggplot2" ``` **Response:** ```json { "data": { "end": "2026-05-29", "start": "2026-04-30", "period": "last-month", "package": "ggplot2", "downloads": 2227921 }, "meta": { "timestamp": "2026-05-31T12:34:39.015Z", "request_id": "46ea87c9-a533-4e0b-919d-77399b244d0a" }, "status": "ok", "message": "Downloads retrieved", "success": true } ``` #### `GET /v1/package` — Package metadata + dependencies + downloads **Parameters:** - `name` (query, required, string) — R package name (case-sensitive), e.g. ggplot2 Example: `ggplot2` **Example:** ```bash curl -H "x-oanor-key: $KEY" \ "https://api.oanor.com/cran-api/v1/package?name=ggplot2" ``` **Response:** ```json { "data": { "package": { "url": "https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org, https://github.com/tidyverse/ggplot2", "name": "ggplot2", "title": "Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics", "author": "Hadley Wickham [aut] (ORCID: ), Winston Chang [aut] (ORCID: ), Lionel Henry [aut], Thomas Lin Pedersen [aut, cre] (ORCID: ), Kohske Takahashi [aut], Claus Wilke [aut] (ORCID: ), Kara Woo [aut] (ORCID: ), Hiroaki Yutani [aut] (ORCID: ), Dewey Dunnington [aut] (ORCID: ), Teun van den Brand [aut] (ORCID: ), Posit, PBC [cph, fnd] (ROR: )", "depends": [ { "name": "R", "constraint": ">= 4.1" } ], "imports": [ { "name": "cli", "constraint": null }, { "name": "grDevices", "constraint": null }, { "name": "grid", "constraint": null }, { …(truncated, see openapi.json for full schema) ``` #### `GET /v1/search` — Search the CRAN registry **Parameters:** - `q` (query, required, string) — Search term Example: `visualization` - `limit` (query, optional, string) — Results (1-100, default 20) **Example:** ```bash curl -H "x-oanor-key: $KEY" \ "https://api.oanor.com/cran-api/v1/search?q=visualization" ``` **Response:** ```json { "data": { "count": 20, "query": "visualization", "total": 2506, "results": [ { "name": "visualize", "score": 9.917457, "title": "Graph Probability Distributions with User Supplied Parameters and Statistics", "version": "4.5.0", "cran_url": "https://cran.r-project.org/package=visualize" }, { "name": "bpmnVisualizationR", "score": 8.463383, "title": "Visualize Process Execution Data on 'BPMN' Diagrams", "version": "0.5.0", "cran_url": "https://cran.r-project.org/package=bpmnVisualizationR" }, { "name": "ggcorrplot", "score": 6.373395, "title": "Visualization of a Correlation Matrix using 'ggplot2'", "version": "0.1.4.1", "cran_url": "https://cran.r-project.org/package=ggcorrplot" }, { "name": "TDbook", "score": 6.373395, "title": "Companion Package for the Book \"Data Integration, Manipulation and Visualization of Phylogenetic Trees\" by Guangchuang Yu (2022, ISBN:9781032233574)", "version": "0.0.6", "cran_url": "https://cran.r-project.org/package=TDbook" }, { "name": "klaR", "score": 4.93 …(truncated, see openapi.json for full schema) ``` #### `GET /v1/versions` — Full release history **Parameters:** - `name` (query, required, string) — R package name, e.g. jsonlite Example: `jsonlite` - `limit` (query, optional, string) — Max versions (1-500, default 50) **Example:** ```bash curl -H "x-oanor-key: $KEY" \ "https://api.oanor.com/cran-api/v1/versions?name=jsonlite" ``` **Response:** ```json { "data": { "count": 46, "total": 46, "latest": "2.0.0", "package": "jsonlite", "versions": [ { "date": "2025-03-27 06:40:02 UTC", "version": "2.0.0" }, { "date": "2025-03-03 22:10:02 UTC", "version": "1.9.1" }, { "date": "2025-02-19 15:50:06 UTC", "version": "1.9.0" }, { "date": "2024-09-20 08:40:14 UTC", "version": "1.8.9" }, { "date": "2023-12-04 15:20:02 UTC", "version": "1.8.8" }, { "date": "2023-06-29 22:10:02 UTC", "version": "1.8.7" }, { "date": "2023-06-05 12:20:02 UTC", "version": "1.8.5" }, { "date": "2022-12-06 08:10:02 UTC", "version": "1.8.4" }, { "date": "2022-10-21 08:15:07 UTC", "version": "1.8.3" }, { "date": "2022-10-02 16:20:02 UTC", "version": "1.8.2" }, { "date": "2022-10-01 14:00:02 UTC", "version": "1.8.1" }, { "date": "2022-02-22 11:20:02 UTC", "version": "1.8. …(truncated, see openapi.json for full schema) ``` ### Meta #### `GET /v1/meta` — Source & options **Example:** ```bash curl -H "x-oanor-key: $KEY" \ "https://api.oanor.com/cran-api/v1/meta" ``` **Response:** ```json { "data": { "note": "Live CRAN registry data. /v1/package = metadata (title, description, license, maintainer, dependencies, last-month downloads); /v1/versions = full release history with dates; /v1/search = search the registry; /v1/downloads = download counts (add daily=true for a daily series). Package names are case-sensitive (e.g. ggplot2, jsonlite, Matrix).", "source": "CRAN — the Comprehensive R Archive Network (the R package registry)", "endpoints": [ "/v1/package", "/v1/versions", "/v1/search", "/v1/downloads", "/v1/meta" ], "upstreams": { "search": "search.r-pkg.org", "metadata": "crandb.r-pkg.org", "downloads": "cranlogs.r-pkg.org" }, "download_periods": [ "last-day", "last-week", "last-month" ] }, "meta": { "timestamp": "2026-05-31T12:34:40.332Z", "request_id": "e88b3e5d-2f1a-4201-9b55-2389c1dc2db3" }, "status": "ok", "message": "Meta retrieved", "success": true } ``` --- Marketplace page: https://www.oanor.com/api/cran-api OpenAPI spec: https://www.oanor.com/api/cran-api/openapi.json