edu.school-lookup

Look up any US public K-12 school (~102k, NCES Common Core of Data). Search by name (partial), district (LEA name, partial), state (2-letter), city, zip, or exact ncessch (12-digit NCES id). Each school: NCES id, name, district + LEA id, address, phone, lat/lon, school level (1=primary 2=middle 3=high 4=other) and type (1=regular 2=special-ed 3=vocational 4=alternative), charter/magnet/virtual flags, enrollment, teacher FTE, grade span, CCD year. Results ordered by enrollment. Higher-ed sibling: /api/edu/college-scorecard. Public-domain federal data.

Overview

The school lookup API is a pay-per-call edu endpoint built for AI agents and autonomous software. Look up any US public K-12 school (~102k, NCES Common Core of Data).

There is no signup and no API key. An agent (or any HTTP client) hits the endpoint, receives an x402 "402 Payment Required" challenge, signs a sub-cent USDC payment on Base or Solana, and retries — the data comes back on the paid request. That makes it a drop-in school lookup data source for an agent tool-use loop, an MCP host, or a backend that needs edu data on demand without onboarding to yet another vendor portal.

Use cases

• Give an AI agent live school lookup lookups as a tool, with no API key to provision or rotate — the agent pays per call from a wallet you fund.
• Enrich records in a data pipeline with edu data, paying only for the calls you actually make instead of a monthly seat.
• Ground LLM answers in authoritative edu data to cut hallucination, then optionally request a signed response for verifiability.
• Prototype against the live school lookup API in minutes using the free trial call, then flip to per-call x402 payment for production with no code change.

Parameters

Code samples

# 1. Probe with no auth → 402 envelope with PaymentRequirements
curl -sS 'https://2s.io/api/edu/school-lookup?name=xx&district=xx&state=xx&city=xx&zip=12345&ncessch=12345&limit=10&offset=0'

# 2. Sign + retry with PAYMENT-SIGNATURE:
curl -sS 'https://2s.io/api/edu/school-lookup?name=xx&district=xx&state=xx&city=xx&zip=12345&ncessch=12345&limit=10&offset=0' \
  -H 'PAYMENT-SIGNATURE: <base64-json-payload>'

# Or use the canonical runner (handles probe → sign → retry):
#   EVM_PRIVATE_KEY=0x... node --env-file=.env.local \
#     --experimental-strip-types scripts/x402-pay.ts \
#     'https://2s.io/api/edu/school-lookup?name=xx&district=xx&state=xx&city=xx&zip=12345&ncessch=12345&limit=10&offset=0'

import { TwoS } from '@2sio/sdk'

const client = new TwoS({
  privateKey: process.env.EVM_PRIVATE_KEY as `0x${string}`,
})

const result = await client.edu.schoolLookup({
  "name": "xx",
  "district": "xx",
  "state": "xx",
  "city": "xx",
  "zip": "12345",
  "ncessch": "12345",
  "limit": 10,
  "offset": 0
})

console.log('endpoint:', result.endpoint)
console.log('cost:', result.costUsd, 'USDC')
console.log('tx:', result.settlement?.txHash)
console.log('data:', result.data)

import os
from twosio import TwoS

client = TwoS(private_key=os.environ["EVM_PRIVATE_KEY"])

result = client.edu.school_lookup(name="xx", district="xx", state="xx", city="xx", zip="12345", ncessch="12345", limit=10, offset=0)

print("endpoint:", result.endpoint)
print("cost:", result.cost_usd, "USDC")
print("tx:", (result.settlement or {}).get("tx_hash"))
print("data:", result.data)

// 1. Add @2sio/mcp to your MCP host config (Claude Desktop example below).
//    EVM_PRIVATE_KEY funds x402 payments per call.

// claude_desktop_config.json
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "2sio": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@2sio/mcp"],
      "env": { "EVM_PRIVATE_KEY": "0x..." }
    }
  }
}

// 2. Once the server is running, agents call this tool via standard MCP:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "id": 1,
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "name": "edu.school-lookup",
    "arguments": {
      "name": "xx",
      "district": "xx",
      "state": "xx",
      "city": "xx",
      "zip": "12345",
      "ncessch": "12345",
      "limit": 10,
      "offset": 0
    }
  }
}

Response

{
  "ok": true,
  "items": [
    {
      "ncessch": "example",
      "name": "example",
      "district": "example",
      "leaid": "example",
      "state": "example",
      "city": "example",
      "street": "example",
      "zip": "example",
      "phone": "example",
      "latitude": 1,
      "longitude": 1,
      "schoolLevel": 1,
      "schoolType": 1,
      "charter": false,
      "magnet": false,
      "virtual": false,
      "enrollment": 1,
      "teachersFte": 1,
      "lowestGrade": 1,
      "highestGrade": 1,
      "year": 1
    }
  ],
  "total": 1,
  "source": {
    "provider": "example",
    "url": "example",
    "license": "example"
  }
}

FAQ

Do I need an API key to use the school lookup API?

No. edu.school-lookup is x402-native — there is no signup and no API key. Your client makes the call, receives a 402 with payment requirements, signs a USDC payment, and retries. Funds come from a wallet you control.

How much does the school lookup API cost?

$0.00144 USDC per call, charged per request. There are no monthly fees, seats, or minimums — you pay only for the calls you make.

Can I try the school lookup API for free first?

Yes. Add ?trial=1 (or the header X-2s-Trial: 1) to get a free real call per endpoint per hour, so you can verify the response shape before wiring payment.

Which networks and tokens are supported?

USDC on Base (via EIP-3009 transferWithAuthorization) or Solana (SPL transfer), using the open x402 payment protocol.

How do I call edu.school-lookup from an AI agent or MCP host?

Use @2sio/sdk (TypeScript), 2sio (Python), or the @2sio/mcp server for any MCP host — each handles the probe → sign → retry loop for you. See the code samples on this page.

Discovery

• /api/directory — full catalog of every endpoint
• /openapi.json — OpenAPI 3.1 spec (per-op x-payment-info, x402Payment security)
• /.well-known/x402 — machine-readable service descriptor for x402-aware crawlers
• /.well-known/mcp/server-card.json — MCP SEP-1649 server card
• /llms.txt — plain-text manifest for LLM ingestion