Is There an SSDI API? What SSA Actually Exposes to Developers (and What It Doesn't)

This is general information about public data sources and disclosure rules, not legal advice; confirm details against the linked primary sources before relying on them.

"SSDI API" is a query with three different people behind it: a developer who wants disability data, an attorney or vendor who wants a claimant's record, and a genealogist or fraud analyst who means the Death Index. This post answers all three.

Is there an official SSDI API?

No public API returns anyone's personal SSDI claim, decision, or benefit status. What SSA does expose to developers is aggregate open data: federal law — the OPEN Government Data Act, codified at 44 U.S.C. § 3511 — requires every agency to maintain a comprehensive inventory of its data assets and submit its public ones to a single Federal data catalogue (Data.gov) run by GSA.

SSA's machine-readable inventory lives at https://www.ssa.gov/data.json, is licensed CC0 (public domain), and lists the datasets summarized below; the SSA Open Data team is reachable at open.data@ssa.gov per the Data.gov Public Data Listing entry. If you are writing code, that data.json file is the closest thing to a root endpoint SSA offers.

What SSDI and disability datasets can you download programmatically?

Start with the number that shows how much is sitting in these files: the current ALJ Disposition Data report (SSA Office of Hearings Operations, reporting period ending June 26, 2026, file created July 10, 2026) carries 1,228 judge-office rows for 987 administrative law judges across 164 hearing offices, with an unweighted average allowance rate of 57.1% on decided cases as ingested by AISSDI. Every one of those rows is free, and nobody needs an API key.

Five SSA files cover most disability-data needs, and all are CC0. SSA's Data.gov organization page lists them in CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, ZIP, PDF and XLS formats, alongside items like "SSI Recipients by State and County - 2024" and "Congressional Statistics, 2025."

| Dataset | Cadence | Format / endpoint | What it contains | |---|---|---|---| | SSA State Agency Workload Data | Monthly | CSV — ssa.gov/disability/data/SSA-SA-MOWL.csv | One row per state per month, October 2000 onward: receipts, end-of-month pending, determinations and allowances, broken out by title (SSDI vs. SSI) and by initial / reconsideration / CDR | | SSA Disability Claim Data | Annual | CSV — ssa.gov/disability/data/SSA-SA-FYWL.csv | Fiscal-year initial claims referred to state agencies: per-state receipts, determinations, eligible population, favorable-determination rates | | ALJ Disposition Data | Monthly | HTML / XML — ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/03_ALJ_Disposition_Data.xml | Per-judge hearing completions: hearing office, total dispositions, decisions, allowances, denials, fully/partially favorable | | Hearing Office Workload Data | Monthly | HTML / XML — ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/02_HO_Workload_Data.xml (current report) | Four indicators per OHO hearing office: pending, receipts, dispositions, average processing time | | Field Office Contact Information | Quarterly | CSV — ssa.gov/data/FO-Address-Open-Close-Times.csv, plus a web service | Field Office locations, telephone numbers, and hours of operation |

The ALJ Disposition file is the one most firms end up parsing by hand, because it is the only place SSA publishes outcomes by the name of each individual administrative law judge. AISSDI ingests that same monthly XML and serves it as a lookup — the tool below runs live inside this article:

Any site can embed this lookup free — grab the snippet at aissdi.com/embed. Copy-paste citation for the underlying data: Social Security Administration, "ALJ Disposition Data - Current Report," Office of Hearings Operations, updated monthly, https://www.ssa.gov/appeals/DataSets/03_ALJ_Disposition_Data.xml (CC0).

How do you pull a specific claimant's SSDI record electronically?

Only with that person's written consent, or through a restricted channel built for a specific class of user. Under 20 CFR § 401.100, SSA will not disclose an individual's records without their written consent except as the Privacy Act permits or FOIA requires, and the consent must clearly specify to whom the information may be disclosed, what information (for example, monthly benefit amount or date of entitlement), and, where applicable, the timeframe.

The operating manual is blunter. POMS GN 03305.003 states that SSA must "have the written consent of an individual before disclosing information about them to a third party, unless one of the 12 Privacy Act exceptions applies," and names Form SSA-3288 as the preferred consent form; the consent must be signed and dated by the individual, and the current POMS text governs which signature formats SSA will accept, so read it before you build an intake flow around e-signed releases. SSN verification without consent is limited to narrow circumstances such as federal-law requirements and authorized income or health programs (POMS GN 03325.002).

The channels that do exist are role-gated:

• Representatives — ARS. Under POMS HA 01510.022, an appointed representative who requests direct fee payment "must access and obtain electronic claim(s) files through ARS" (Appointed Representative Services), which lets a representative examine a claim file online, download material from it, and upload evidence in real time.
• Claimants — my Social Security. Per POMS NL 01201.001, account holders can view online notices, opt out of paper versions of some notices, and retrieve their Social Security Statement and SSA-1099/SSA-1042 benefit statements.
• State human-service agencies — SOLQ. The State Online Query System gives states real-time access to SSA's SSN verification service and, if permitted, Title 2 and/or Title 16 data; Data.gov lists it as "restricted public" for privacy reasons, as it does SSA's internal SSN Verification Service.

If your firm's problem is upstream of any of this — deciding which inbound leads are worth signing before you ever request a file — that is a scoring question, not a data-access question, and it is what the claim scorer is for.

What is eCBSV, and can you use it?

eCBSV is the one real SSA verification API, and it is closed to everyone but financial institutions and their service providers. Congress created it in 42 U.S.C. § 405b — § 215 of the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act (Pub. L. 115-174, May 24, 2018) — which directs SSA to let "permitted entities" validate fraud-protection data with electronically received consumer consent, with costs "fully recovered from the users of the database or verification system."

What it returns is a match, not a record. Per the April 7, 2025 Federal Register notice, eCBSV lets SSA verify and disclose to a permitted entity, based on the number holder's consent, whether a submitted SSN, name, and date of birth match SSA's records. The schedule in that notice sets 12 annual-subscription tiers, from $5,100 (up to 10,000 transactions) to $5,878,125 (up to 200 million transactions); SSA changes the schedule by Federal Register notice (that April 2025 document is itself a tier-fee decrease), so check the most recent notice before budgeting. It carries no disability, entitlement, or payment information, and it is not open to individuals, claimants, or law firms.

Wait — do you mean the Social Security Death Index?

If you searched "SSDI API" for genealogy or fraud screening, you mean the Death Master File, and its access rules are a separate statute. Under 15 CFR § 1110.2, the DMF is "information on the name, social security account number, date of birth, and date of death of deceased individuals maintained by the Commissioner of Social Security"; the "Limited Access DMF" includes deaths within the three-calendar-year window after death, while the "Open Access DMF" excludes them.

That three-year window is the whole point. 42 U.S.C. § 1306c bars disclosure of DMF information during the "3-calendar-year period beginning on the date of the individual's death" except to persons certified as having "a legitimate fraud prevention interest, or a legitimate business purpose pursuant to a law, governmental rule, regulation, or fiduciary duty," with a penalty of "$1,000 for each such disclosure or use," capped at $250,000 per person per year (no cap for willful violations). NTIS runs the certification program under § 203 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 and 15 CFR Part 1110; the fee table posted there lists a $2,930 annual certification-form processing fee, a $247 systems-safeguards attestation fee every three years, and $268 for firewalled-status attestation — NTIS revises these, so treat the live page as controlling.

FAQ

Is there an official SSDI API? No public API returns any individual's SSDI claim or benefit status. SSA publishes aggregate open data via its data.json inventory and Data.gov, and person-level disclosure requires written consent under 20 CFR § 401.100 or a restricted channel.

What SSDI datasets can I download programmatically? State Agency Workload Data (monthly, per state, October 2000+), SSA Disability Claim Data (annual, per state), ALJ Disposition and Hearing Office Workload Data (monthly XML/HTML), and Field Office Contact Information (quarterly CSV plus a web service) — all CC0, all indexed on SSA's Data.gov page.

How can a lawyer pull a claimant's file electronically? Through Appointed Representative Services, which POMS HA 01510.022 makes mandatory for representatives requesting direct fee payment.

Can my company use eCBSV? Only if it is a financial institution or a service provider to one — a "permitted entity" under 42 U.S.C. § 405b — and only for a yes/no SSN-name-DOB match.

Is "SSDI" the Death Index? Often. That SSDI is the Death Master File; recent deaths are restricted under 42 U.S.C. § 1306c and NTIS certification.