Free JSON API and licence

Last updated 2026-08-23

Everything on this site, the rankings, the live player counts, the Pokedex, the spawn tables and the drop tables, is available as JSON under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Use it in a Discord bot, a server list, a website, an app, a dashboard or a research paper, commercially or not. The only condition is attribution. There is no key, no sign-up, no quota form and no email address to collect.

The endpoints

• https://bestcobblemonservers.net/api/rankings.json the ranked server list with live counts. /api/servers.json is the same payload under its older name.
• https://bestcobblemonservers.net/api/player-counts.json a point-in-time snapshot across the major Minecraft servers we track.
• https://bestcobblemonservers.net/api/history.json player counts sampled every ten minutes, with peaks, averages and uptime.
• https://bestcobblemonservers.net/api/status/<slug> a single server's current status.

CORS is open on all of them, so you can call them straight from a browser. Plain-text versions of the site for language models live at llms.txt and llms-full.txt, with a quote-ready summary at /ai.

How to attribute

A link is enough. Either of these satisfies the licence:

Server data from bestcobblemonservers.net (CC BY 4.0)

<a href="https://bestcobblemonservers.net">bestcobblemonservers.net</a> · CC BY 4.0

In a Discord bot, a line in /help or an embed footer does the job. In an app, a credits screen is fine. What the licence does not allow is presenting the data as your own measurement, because the counts are our pings.

Caching, and being a good citizen

Player counts refresh on a short cycle, so polling every few seconds returns you the same bytes. One request every couple of minutes per application is plenty. There is no hard rate limit and we would rather not add one.

What the licence covers, and what it does not

• Covered. The rankings, the player counts and history, the Pokedex, spawn, drop and breeding data we extracted, our written guides, and the join addresses. Reuse, adapt and redistribute with attribution.
• Not ours to license. Server names, logos and banners belong to the servers that own them. Minecraft is a Mojang trademark, Pokemon is a Nintendo, Game Freak and Pokemon Company trademark, and Cobblemon is an independent open source project. This site is not affiliated with any of them.
• Not allowed. Republishing our pings as your own measurements, or presenting our ranking as anything other than one site's editorial judgement.

Common questions

Is it really free? Yes. No key, no account, no quota form.

Can I use it commercially? Yes. CC BY 4.0 permits commercial use, adaptation and redistribution with attribution.

Can I use it on a competing server list? Yes, which is rather the point of publishing under an open licence. Credit the source.

Is there historical data? Yes, /api/history.json, and the player counts page shows what it holds.

Why no star ratings in the data? Because a rating one site issues about another operator's server, on a page that site controls, is not evidence. We publish measurements we take ourselves.