---
id: census
version: "0.8.27"
license: BSD
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: active
---

# census — A wrapper for the US Census Bureau's API

License: permissive · Maintenance: active · Downloads: 198.7K/mo

## What it is and what it does

Census is a lightweight client library that abstracts the Census Bureau's HTTP API into Python method calls. It handles the low-level details of constructing API requests, managing geographic specifications (FIPS codes, state/county/tract hierarchies), and parsing responses for multiple Census datasets including ACS 5-year, 3-year, and 1-year estimates, as well as Summary File 1 and redistricting data.

The library provides convenience methods for common geographic queries (state, county, tract, congressional district, etc.) and supports year-based queries across historical datasets. It depends only on requests for HTTP communication, making it lightweight to integrate into data pipelines, demographic analysis scripts, or research tools that need programmatic Census access.

Use it for:

- Retrieve demographic statistics for a specific state or county to build population reports or dashboards.
- Query historical Census data across multiple years to analyze demographic trends in a geographic area.
- Automate bulk extraction of housing, income, or education metrics for research or policy analysis.
- Build geographic lookup tools that map FIPS codes to Census data for civic tech applications.
- Integrate Census data into data warehouses or ETL pipelines for downstream analysis.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides a Python wrapper for the United States Census Bureau's API, enabling programmatic access to American Community Survey (ACS) and Summary File 1 (SF1) demographic data across multiple geographic levels.

Yes. Census is a stable, actively maintained wrapper with low install friction (one dependency), no known vulnerabilities, and permissive licensing. Install it if you need programmatic access to US Census data; it eliminates manual API construction and provides geographic convenience methods. The only prerequisite is obtaining a free Census API key.

## Install

pip install census
uv add census
poetry add census

## Installing census

Before you install: Low friction: pure Python wheel with only requests as a runtime dependency. Active maintenance with recent release (91 days ago) and 681 repository stars indicate ongoing support.

License in practice: BSD permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; suitable for most projects.

Quickstart:

pip install census

from census import Census

c = Census("YOUR_API_KEY")
data = c.acs5.state(('NAME', 'B25034_010E'), '24')

Requires a Census API key obtained from https://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html before making any data requests.

Verify before relying:

- Whether the package supports Python 3.x versions or has any minimum Python version requirement (not specified in metadata).
- Performance characteristics when querying large geographic areas or multiple years of historical data.

## Package facts

- License: BSD (permissive)
- Python support: unspecified
- Install friction: low
- Maintenance: active
- Downloads: 198.7K/month (top 15,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

census bureau api wrapper, us demographic data access, american community survey python, census acs sf1 data, geographic census queries, fips code demographic lookup, us census api client, census-data, government-api, demographics

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/census) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/census/)