API to get the population by country

Question

Is there a free API to get the population of every country ?

I've searched on the World Bank Open Data but I didn't find the API for it.

Answer 1

Yes, the World Bank offers an API access for free, and you can retrieve this kind of data quite easily. The API documentation is available here: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/topics/125589

In the "API Basic Call Structures" section, they give a very simple example of how to get the population of all countries in the year 2000, in XML format:

http://api.worldbank.org/v2/country/all/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL?date=2000.

Don't forget to follow their recommendations when using the API: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/902064-development-best-practices

Answer 2

Countries API (FREE):

• https://countriesnow.space/
• https://restcountries.com/

both do not need Authentication.

Answer 3

Austrian non-profit population.io has an API link on its homepage but I haven't signed up for it and thus not used it.

You can also get country population data from a SPARQL query to Wikidata:

PREFIX wd:       <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/>
PREFIX wdt:      <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/direct/>
PREFIX p:        <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/>
PREFIX ps:       <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/statement/>
PREFIX pq:       <http://www.wikidata.org/prop/qualifier/>
PREFIX rdfs:     <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX xsd:      <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX bd:       <http://www.bigdata.com/rdf#>
PREFIX wikibase: <http://wikiba.se/ontology#>
PREFIX schema:   <http://schema.org/>

  SELECT ?country ?countryQ ?countryLabel ?popDate (MAX(?population) as ?maxPop) 
  WHERE {
    ?country wdt:P31 wd:Q3624078;
      wdt:P30 wd:Q46.
    OPTIONAL {    ?country p:P1082 ?popStmt.
    ?popStmt ps:P1082 ?population.
    ?popStmt pq:P585 ?popDate.
    }
    BIND (xsd:integer(REPLACE(STR(?country), "http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q", "" )) as ?countryQ)
    FILTER(?countryQ < 2000)
    SERVICE wikibase:label { bd:serviceParam wikibase:language "[AUTO_LANGUAGE],en". }
  }
  GROUP BY ?country ?countryQ ?countryLabel ?popDate
  ORDER BY ASC(?countryQ) ASC( ?countryLabel)
  LIMIT 10

Try this query, e.g. comment out the FILTER clause or change the LIMIT