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Stack Exchange — independent third-party profile of a public API surface, by API Evangelist. Stack Exchange is the network of Q&A communities founded by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood and headlined by Stack Overflow, the largest community of software developers on the web. The Stack Exchange API v2.3 (api.stackexchange.com) is a single, read-mostly H

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Stack Exchange (stackexchange)

About this repository

This is not our API. This repository is an independent, third-party profile of a company's publicly available API surface, maintained by API Evangelist. API Evangelist does not operate, host, resell, or support this company's APIs, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated on the profile.

Where the information came from. Everything here is assembled from material a member of the public can reach with a browser and no credentials — the company's own website, developer portal and documentation, the specifications it publishes for public use (OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, JSON Schema, apis.json, llms.txt and similar), its public repositories, and its public status, pricing and changelog pages. Nothing here is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials of any kind.

The rating is an independent assessment. The Kin Score and Agent Readiness rating are independently calculated scores of a company's public API artifacts, produced by API Evangelist against a published rubric. They are not certifications, endorsements, security assessments, or audits, and they score published artifacts — not the quality, safety, or security of the software.

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Full detail: Where this data comes from

Stack Exchange is the network of Q&A communities founded by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood and headlined by Stack Overflow, the largest community of software developers on the web. The Stack Exchange API v2.3 (api.stackexchange.com) is a single, read-mostly HTTP/JSON interface that spans 180+ Q&A sites — Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Stats, Math Overflow, and the long tail of topical communities — and exposes the entire Q&A graph (questions, answers, comments, users, tags, badges, reputation, revisions, notifications, inbox, suggested-edits, network sites) under a uniform method surface. Stack Exchange also operates Stack Overflow for Teams (private knowledge bases with its own v3 REST API) and ships an official Stack Overflow MCP server that grounds AI agents in community-verified content.

URL: Visit APIs.json URL

Run: Capabilities Using Naftiko

Tags:

  • Q And A, Developer Community, Knowledge Graph, Stack Overflow, Stack Exchange, Reputation, Tags, Community, MCP, AI Grounding

Timestamps

  • Created: 2026-05-28
  • Modified: 2026-05-29

APIs

Stack Exchange API v2.3

Public, read-mostly HTTP/JSON API spanning all 180+ Stack Exchange sites. All method families — questions, answers, comments, users, tags, badges, sites, search, /me, access-tokens, notifications, inbox, events, revisions, info, reputation, privileges, suggested-edits, posts — live under a single base URL with a uniform response wrapper (items, has_more, page, quota_max, quota_remaining, backoff). Read access requires no auth; writes (posting, voting, flagging, accepting) require OAuth 2.0 with the appropriate scopes (write_access, private_info, no_expiry).

Human URL: https://api.stackexchange.com/docs

Base URL: https://api.stackexchange.com/2.3

Tags:

  • Stack Exchange, Public API, Q And A, Read-Mostly, OAuth 2.0

Properties

Stack Overflow for Teams API v3

Newer REST API powering Stack Overflow for Teams (private/internal instances). Resource-oriented (questions, answers, articles, comments, tags, users, collections, communities) with full CRUD and bearer-token auth. This is the API the official TypeScript SDK and Terraform provider target; it is distinct from the public v2.3 API.

Human URL: https://stackoverflowteams.help/en/articles/9085836-api-v3-overview

Base URL: https://api.stackoverflowteams.com/v3/teams/{team}/

Tags:

  • Stack Overflow for Teams, Internal API, REST, Bearer Token

Properties

Common Properties

Features

Name Description
Network-Wide Q&A Graph Single API surface spans 180+ communities. Use the site parameter (stackoverflow, serverfault, superuser, askubuntu, stats, mathoverflow, …) to switch context without changing endpoints.
Vectorized IDs Most methods accept up to 100 semicolon-delimited IDs in a single request (e.g., /questions/{ids}, /users/{ids}, /answers/{ids}), making bulk fetch and join workloads cheap.
Filter System Custom response filters let consumers project exactly the fields they need, dramatically reducing payload size. Filters are created once via /filters/create and reused.
Compressed JSON All responses are gzip-compressed by default; the wire payload is roughly 30-50% the size of an unconditioned JSON body.
Quota and Backoff Discipline Every response advertises quota_max, quota_remaining, and an optional backoff integer. Clients must honor the backoff before re-querying the same method or risk being throttled at 503 / banned.
OAuth 2.0 Write Access Read is unauthenticated. Write methods (post answer, create comment, vote, flag, accept) require an OAuth 2.0 access token issued via explicit or implicit flows registered on stackapps.com.
/me Convenience Methods Every /users/{ids}/... method has a /me/... equivalent that infers the user from the access token, simplifying agent code paths.
Site Discovery /sites enumerates every Q&A community on the network with its api_site_parameter, audience, launch date, and styling — the canonical way to bootstrap a multi-site integration.
AI Grounding via MCP The official Stack Overflow MCP server exposes search, retrieve, and ground tools so MCP-compatible clients (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code) can reach community-verified answers without bespoke integration.

Use Cases

Name Description
AI Answer Grounding Ground LLM responses in real Stack Overflow questions and answers — either directly via /search and /questions methods or through the official MCP server — to reduce hallucinations on technical topics.
Developer Reputation Scoring Pull /users, /users/{ids}/reputation, badge counts, and tag scores to build developer reputation, expertise, and hiring-signal pipelines.
Community Analytics Aggregate /questions, /tags, /tags/{tags}/info, and /sites data to track technology adoption, tag velocity, and community health across the network.
Personal Activity Dashboards Use /me, /me/inbox, /me/notifications, /me/timeline, /me/answers, and /me/questions to build personal dashboards of a user's own activity, reputation, and unread events.
Tag Tracking and Triage Watch /tags/{tags}/info, /questions?tagged=…, /search/advanced, and /questions/no-answers to triage incoming questions for OSS projects and vendor support teams.
Knowledge Base Mirroring Periodically sweep /questions with a filter and a since-date to mirror Q&A into an internal knowledge base or RAG index, respecting the API quota and backoff.
Moderation Workbench Combine /suggested-edits, /flags, /posts, and /revisions surfaces (with a moderator access token) to build moderation review queues.
Stack Overflow for Teams Integrations Use the v3 Teams API plus the Terraform provider and Backstage plugin to provision questions, articles, and tags from CI/CD pipelines.

Integrations

Name Description
Claude Desktop / Cursor / VS Code via MCP The Stack Overflow MCP server plugs directly into any MCP-compatible client, giving AI agents a typed search/retrieve interface to community content.
LangChain Official LangChain integration for Stack Overflow for Teams enables retrieval and chat over private Teams content from LangChain pipelines.
Backstage Backstage plugin (backstage-stackoverflow) surfaces Stack Overflow for Teams content inside Backstage developer portals.
Terraform Terraform provider (terraform-provider-stackoverflow) manages questions, answers, and articles in Stack Overflow for Teams as code.
StacMan (.NET) Long-standing .NET client for Stack Exchange API v2 (StackExchange/StacMan) covering the public v2.3 surface.

Solutions

Name Description
Public API v2.3 Read-mostly, unauthenticated public access to the full Q&A graph across 180+ sites. Default integration path for developer tools, dashboards, community analytics, and AI grounding.
Stack Overflow for Teams API v3 Private REST API for Stack Overflow for Teams customers, used by the TypeScript SDK, Terraform provider, Backstage plugin, and LangChain integration.
Stack Overflow MCP Server Beta MCP server that lets MCP-compatible AI clients search, retrieve, and ground answers in Stack Overflow content with simple OAuth onboarding.
Stack Exchange Data Explorer SQL-style query interface for the Stack Exchange data dumps, used for analytics workloads that exceed the API quota.

Artifacts

Machine-readable API specifications organized by format.

OpenAPI

JSON Schema

JSON Structure

JSON-LD

Examples

Capabilities

Self-contained Naftiko capabilities — one file per business surface (OpenAPI tag), each with consumes + REST + MCP exposers inlined.

Capability Tools File
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Access Tokens 3 stack-exchange-access-tokens.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Answers 4 stack-exchange-answers.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Badges 5 stack-exchange-badges.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Comments 2 stack-exchange-comments.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Events 1 stack-exchange-events.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Filters 2 stack-exchange-filters.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Info 1 stack-exchange-info.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Me 12 stack-exchange-me.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Posts 5 stack-exchange-posts.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Questions 9 stack-exchange-questions.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Revisions 1 stack-exchange-revisions.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Search 4 stack-exchange-search.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Sites 1 stack-exchange-sites.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Suggested Edits 2 stack-exchange-suggested-edits.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Tags 7 stack-exchange-tags.yaml
Stack Exchange API v2.3 — Users 11 stack-exchange-users.yaml

Vocabulary

Rules

Plans

Rate Limits

Maintainers

FN: Kin Lane

Email: kin@apievangelist.com

About

Stack Exchange — independent third-party profile of a public API surface, by API Evangelist. Stack Exchange is the network of Q&A communities founded by Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood and headlined by Stack Overflow, the largest community of software developers on the web. The Stack Exchange API v2.3 (api.stackexchange.com) is a single, read-mostly H

Topics

ai-groundingapis-jsoncommunitydeveloper-communityknowledge-graphmcpq-and-areputationstack-exchangestack-overflowtags

Resources

Readme
Activity
Custom properties

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