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What is the Buoy API?

The Buoy API gives you read-only access to real-time and historical wave data from an international network of ocean buoys. All documented operations are GET requests. Data is sourced from official networks including Candhis, Météo France, NOAA/NDBC, Sofar Ocean, and others. Every response uses a consistent {status, data, meta} envelope, making it easy to integrate into any stack.

Quickstart

Make your first API call in under 5 minutes.

Authentication

Understand how API key authentication works.

France Buoys Guide

Fetch all active buoys for a country in one call.

API Reference

Browse the full endpoint documentation.

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Key Features

Access the latest wave height, period, direction, and water temperature from hundreds of active buoys worldwide. Readings are typically updated every 30 minutes.
Filter buoys by ISO country code (?country=FR), geographic bounding box, or a coordinates + radius query. Each response includes pagination metadata.
Retrieve paginated historical readings per buoy with date range filters, or search for the reading closest to a specific timestamp.
Build dashboards with optimized chart payloads: wave height, period, forecasts, and tide levels as aligned time series.
Every response includes X-RateLimit-* headers. Requests exceeding your hourly quota return a 429 with a retry_after value so your client can back off gracefully.

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API at a Glance

PropertyValue
Base URLhttps://thesurfkit.com/api/v2
AuthAuthorization: Bearer <api_key>
FormatJSON (application/json)
Default rate limit1,000 requests / hour
Versionv2 (production)

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Data Sources

NetworkRegionType
CandhisFranceWave buoys
Météo FranceFranceWave buoys
NOAA / NDBCUSAWave & weather buoys
Sofar OceanGlobalSpotter buoys
VegagerðinIcelandWave buoys
API access is currently by invitation. To request access, email thomas@thesurfkit.com.