nirfindia.org APInirfindia.org ↗
Access NIRF India rankings data across years 2017–2025. Get institution scores, rank bands, categories, participating colleges, and methodology parameters.
No input parameters required.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/4b2d8cc5-bb27-4960-94e1-b014fc507966/get_available_ranking_years' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Returns all available ranking years published on NIRF. Years range from 2017 to 2025.
No input parameters required.
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"years": "array of year strings in descending order"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"years": [
"2025",
"2024",
"2023",
"2022",
"2021",
"2020",
"2019",
"2018",
"2017"
]
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the nirfindia.org API
The NIRF India API provides structured access to National Institutional Ranking Framework data through 7 endpoints covering rankings from 2017 to 2025. Use get_rankings_by_category to retrieve full score breakdowns for top-100 institutions across categories like Engineering, University, and Pharmacy, or pull rank-band slices beyond the top 100. The API also exposes participating institution lists, name-based search, ranking methodology parameters, and official NIRF notifications.
Rankings Data
get_rankings_by_category is the core endpoint. It accepts a year (2017–2025), a category slug (e.g. Overall, Engineering, Management), and an optional rank_band parameter. Without rank_band, it returns the top 100 ranked institutions with full score breakdowns and links to PDF report cards. With a rank_band value taken from available_rank_bands[*].rank_band_param in the response, it returns institutions in that extended band, though the data is limited to name, city, and state — score fields are not available for rank bands beyond the top 100.
Categories and Years
get_ranking_categories accepts an optional year and returns an array of category objects, each with a name, slug, and url. Category coverage expands over time: 2017 and 2018 have fewer categories than 2024 or 2025. Pass the slug values directly into get_rankings_by_category or get_participating_institutions_list. get_available_ranking_years takes no inputs and returns all published years as an array of strings in descending order.
Participating Institutions and Search
get_participating_institutions_list returns every institution that submitted data for a given year and category, including those not ranked in the top bands. It returns total_count plus an array of institution objects with name, city, and state. search_institutions_by_name accepts a query string and optionally a year and category, performing a case-insensitive substring match across the top 100 ranked institutions for that category. Results include institute_id, name, city, state, score, and rank.
Methodology and Notifications
get_nirf_parameters returns the official NIRF ranking methodology as an array of parameter objects, each with a parameter name and a sub_parameters list. This reflects NIRF's published scoring criteria. get_notifications returns recent official announcements and advertisements with title, url, and publication dates — useful for tracking ranking release schedules or policy updates.
- Build a year-over-year ranking tracker for specific institutions using
get_rankings_by_categoryacross multiple years. - Generate a ranked leaderboard for a specific category (e.g. Pharmacy, Law) filtered to a particular state using city/state fields in ranking results.
- Identify which institutions participated but were not ranked by comparing
get_participating_institutions_listoutput againstget_rankings_by_categoryresults. - Power a college discovery tool that lets students search for institutions by partial name via
search_institutions_by_nameand view their rank and score. - Visualize NIRF scoring methodology by parsing the parameter and sub-parameter data from
get_nirf_parameters. - Monitor NIRF announcement timelines by polling
get_notificationsfor new PDF links and publication dates. - Compile a dataset of all ranked institutions across every available category for a given year for comparative analysis.
| Tier | Price | Credits/month | Rate limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/mo | 100 | 5 req/min |
| Hobby | $30/mo | 1,000 | 20 req/min |
| Developer | $100/mo | 5,000 | 250 req/min |
One credit = one API call regardless of which marketplace API you call. Exceeding the rate limit returns a 429 response. Authenticate with the X-API-Key header.
Does NIRF provide an official developer API?+
What data is available for institutions ranked outside the top 100?+
get_rankings_by_category returns only name, city, and state. Full score breakdowns — the detailed numeric scores present in top-100 results — are not available for extended rank bands. To explore those bands, use the rank_band_param values from available_rank_bands in any top-100 response.Does `search_institutions_by_name` search across all ranked institutions or only the top 100?+
category and year. Institutions that appear only in rank bands beyond 100, or that participated without receiving a rank, are not included in search results. The get_participating_institutions_list endpoint covers the broader set by name, city, and state.Does the API return historical score trends for a single institution across multiple years?+
year and category combination. There is no aggregated time-series endpoint that tracks a single institution's scores across years. You can fork this API on Parse and revise it to add a multi-year aggregation endpoint built on repeated calls to get_rankings_by_category.Are all NIRF categories available for every year from 2017 to 2025?+
get_ranking_categories with a specific year to see exactly which category slugs are available for that year before querying get_rankings_by_category.