Discover / Data & Research
Datasette
by simonwPython
Open source tool for exploring and publishing structured datasets as an API.
Maturity: experimental because latest release 0.65.2 is pre 1.0. Derived from release and commit history, not a rating.
- Stars
- 11k
- Forks
- 890
- Downloads / mo
- 160k
- Last commit
- 2026-07-31
- License
- Apache-2.0
- Open issues
- 698
Market and trust evidence
Edition not yet matchedNo exact skills.sh identity match is available for this repository. Repository adoption and freshness remain visible above; install momentum is not inferred.
Trust analysis is a screening signal, not a security warranty. Read the ranking and trust methodology.
In practice
Written by AI from this repository’s README · high confidenceSharing a dataset usually means either a raw file download or building a bespoke web app around it.
Use it when
Use it when you have tabular data to explore or publish and want an instant browsable interface plus an API.
Not the right pick when
Built around SQLite files, so it is not the tool for querying a live production Postgres or warehouse.
Capabilities
- datasette serve exposes a database as a web interface on port 8001
- automatic JSON API alongside the web interface
- metadata.json adds title, license and source information
- datasette publish deploys to Heroku or Cloud Run
- runs against arbitrary SQLite files including browser history
- Datasette Lite runs entirely in the browser via WebAssembly
Requirements
- Python 3.8 or higher
- Heroku or Google Cloud Run configured for datasette publish
Cost: Free and open source
Install
Derived from the published package name in the repository, not from a model.
Video walkthroughs
Simon Willison - Datasette - publish an instant JSON API for a SQLite database
Datasette - an ecosystem of tools for working with small data
Third-party YouTube uploads matched to this tool by title, channel and repository name on 2026-08-03. Not made, reviewed or endorsed by SkillPilot. View counts and publish months are as of the match date and the month is approximate. Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.
What the repository ships
Detected from the actual files in the repository root.
Latest release 0.65.2
Published 2025-11-05
- Fixes an open redirect security issue: Datasette instances would redirect to
example.com/foo/barif you accessed the path//example.com/foo/bar. Thanks to James Jefferies for the fix. #2429 - Upgraded for compatibility with Python 3.14.
- Fixed
datasette publish cloudrunto work with changes to the underlying Cloud Run architecture. #2511 - Minor upgrades to fix warnings, including
pkg_resourcesdeprecation.
Tags
README
<img src="https://datasette.io/static/datasette-logo.svg" alt="Datasette">
An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data
Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape or size and publish that as an interactive, explorable website and accompanying API.
Datasette is aimed at data journalists, museum curators, archivists, local governments, scientists, researchers and anyone else who has data that they wish to share with the world.
Explore a demo, watch a video about the project or try it out on GitHub Codespaces.
- datasette.io is the official project website
- Latest Datasette News
- Comprehensive documentation: https://docs.datasette.io/
- Examples: https://datasette.io/examples
- Live demo of current
mainbranch: https://latest.datasette.io/ - Questions, feedback or want to talk about the project? Join our Discord
Want to stay up-to-date with the project? Subscribe to the Datasette newsletter for tips, tricks and news on what's new in the Datasette ecosystem.
Installation
If you are on a Mac, Homebrew is the easiest way to install Datasette:
brew install datasette
You can also install it using pip or pipx:
pip install datasette
Datasette requires Python 3.8 or higher. We also have detailed installation instructions covering other options such as Docker.
Basic usage
datasette serve path/to/database.db
This will start a web server on port 8001 - visit http://localhost:8001/ to access the web interface.
serve is the default subcommand, you can omit it if you like.
Use Chrome on OS X? You can run datasette against your browser history like so:
datasette ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default/History --nolock
Now visiting http://localhost:8001/History/downloads will show you a web interface to browse your downloads data:
Downloads table rendered by datasette
metadata.json
If you want to include licensing and source information in the generated datasette website you can do so using a JSON file that looks something like this:
{
"title": "Five Thirty Eight",
"license": "CC Attribution 4.0 License",
"license_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"source": "fivethirtyeight/data on GitHub",
"source_url": "https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data"
}
Save this in metadata.json and run Datasette like so:
datasette serve fivethirtyeight.db -m metadata.json
The license and source information will be displayed on the index page and in the footer. They will also be included in the JSON produced by the API.
datasette publish
If you have Heroku or Google Cloud Run configured, Datasette can deploy one or more SQLite databases to the internet with a single command:
datasette publish heroku database.db
Or:
datasette publish cloudrun database.db
This will create a docker image containing both the datasette application and the specified SQLite database files. It will then deploy that image to Heroku or Cloud Run and give you a URL to access the resulting website and API.
See Publishing data in the documentation for more details.
Datasette Lite
Datasette Lite is Datasette packaged using WebAssembly so that it runs entirely in your browser, no Python web application server required. Read more about that in the Datasette Lite documentation.