shouldianswer.com APIshouldianswer.com ↗
Look up phone numbers on shouldianswer.com via API. Get community ratings, vote counts, categories, comments, and caller identification data for any number.
No input parameters required.
curl -X GET 'https://api.parse.bot/scraper/115c8a58-59cc-40f8-b328-2356842171cc/get_homepage' \ -H 'X-API-Key: $PARSE_API_KEY'
Get the homepage with latest stories. Returns an array of story titles and links from the shouldianswer.com homepage.
No input parameters required.
{
"type": "object",
"fields": {
"latest_stories": "array of objects with title and link fields"
},
"sample": {
"data": {
"latest_stories": [
{
"link": "https://www.shouldianswer.com/post/learn-how-to-avoid-this-most-often-summer-scam",
"title": "Learn how to avoid this most often summer scam"
},
{
"link": "https://www.shouldianswer.com/post/the-do-not-call-registry-is-it-worth-it",
"title": "The Do Not Call Registry. Is it worth it?"
}
]
},
"status": "success"
}
}About the shouldianswer.com API
The Should I Answer API exposes 7 endpoints covering phone number lookup, community ratings, user comments, and blog content from shouldianswer.com. The get_phone_number_details endpoint returns a structured breakdown of a number including its type, positive/neutral/negative vote tallies, a rating string such as 'NEGATIVE SCAM CALL', and a mapped category count — all indexed to a single digit-string phone number input.
Phone Number Lookup and Ratings
The core endpoints are search_phone_number and get_phone_number_details. Pass a digits-only phone_number parameter (e.g. 8002758777) to get_phone_number_details and receive the number's community rating string, a votes object with negative, neutral, and positive integer counts, a type field (e.g. 'toll free'), a categories object mapping caller-type labels to occurrence counts, and a formatted_number like '+1 800-275-8777'. The description field provides a full text summary of the number's rating history aggregated from community reports. search_phone_number returns the canonical url for the number's detail page on the site.
Community Comments
get_phone_number_comments retrieves all user-submitted reviews for a given number. Each comment object in the returned comments array includes an id, category, sentiment, username, timestamp, and text. If no community reports exist for the number, the endpoint returns an empty array. This makes it straightforward to distinguish numbers with no data from numbers with verified community feedback.
Submitting Ratings
The submit_phone_number_rating POST endpoint allows programmatic submission of a user report. Accepted inputs include rating ('Negative', 'Neutral', or 'Positive'), category (e.g. 'Scam Call', 'Telemarketer', 'Company'), comment, title, email, did_you_answer, and did_number_call_you. On success it returns a formId and a status of 'submitted'. The endpoint handles its own session initialization internally.
Blog Content
get_blog_posts returns an array of all blog post objects, each with title, slug, url, preview, and image fields. To retrieve the full article, pass the slug to get_blog_post, which returns the complete content string along with title and slug. If the slug does not exist, the endpoint returns a stale_input indicator with kind 'input_not_found'.
- Flag incoming calls in a CRM by checking
ratingandvotesbefore routing to a sales team. - Build a reverse phone lookup tool that surfaces
categories,type, andformatted_numberfor end users. - Aggregate
commentsfromget_phone_number_commentsto train a scam-call text classifier. - Enrich a contact database by batch-querying numbers and filtering those with high
negativevote counts. - Automate user-contributed reports from a mobile app using
submit_phone_number_ratingwith category and sentiment fields. - Pull blog content via
get_blog_postsandget_blog_postto syndicate caller-safety articles to a help center. - Monitor newly reported scam numbers by periodically fetching
latest_storiesfromget_homepage.
| 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 shouldianswer.com have an official developer API?+
What does the `votes` field in `get_phone_number_details` actually contain?+
votes field is an object with three integer keys: negative, neutral, and positive. These represent the raw count of community reports submitted under each sentiment for that phone number. The rating string (e.g. 'POSITIVE COMPANY' or 'NEGATIVE SCAM CALL') is a summary derived from those counts.Does the API support paginating through comments or returning only comments after a specific date?+
get_phone_number_comments returns all available comments for a number in a single response; there is no pagination parameter or date filter. Each comment object includes a timestamp field, so client-side filtering by date is possible after retrieval. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to add a date-filter or pagination layer on top of the response.Can I look up numbers from countries other than the United States?+
votes, an empty categories object, and no comments. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to integrate an additional phone data source for broader geographic coverage.Is there a way to retrieve only comments with a specific sentiment or category?+
get_phone_number_comments includes sentiment and category fields, so filtering can be done on the client after fetching the full array. You can fork the API on Parse and revise it to add server-side filtering parameters.