GOV.UK Search

GOV.UK Search & Content API

Search across all GOV.UK content and retrieve full structured pages. No authentication required.

Capabilities

• Free-text search across all GOV.UK content. Supports query, count, format filter, and organisation filter parameters.
• Browse by organisation — see all content published by a specific government department using its slug (e.g. department-for-education).
• Full page payload — retrieve the complete structured content of any GOV.UK page by its path (e.g. council-tax, check-uk-visa, government/organisations/home-office). Returns title, body text, metadata, related links, and document type.

Workflow

1. Search with a query to find relevant pages
2. Browse by org to see all content from a specific department
3. Open full page using the path from search results for the complete structured content

Common filter_format Values

• guidance — Detailed guidance documents
• policy_paper — Policy papers and consultations responses
• statistical_data_set — Statistical datasets
• consultation — Open or closed consultations
• news_story — News stories and press releases
• speech — Speeches and oral statements
• detailed_guide — Step-by-step detailed guides
• form — Forms and templates
• regulation — Regulations and statutory instruments

Gotchas

• Search results return relative URLs in link — strip the leading / to use as the path value when loading the full structured page for that hit.
• Content page responses vary by document_type — the details object structure depends on the page type.
• 303 redirects on content pages indicate the content moved; redirect chains are followed automatically.