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satellitedata.net

Overview

satellitedata.net is a free API for Sentinel-2 and Landsat imagery. It serves both through one interface on AWS in us-west-2, next to the public archives, so you can search scenes, show them on a map and cut GeoTIFFs of an area without handling each mission’s file layout yourself.

The imagery is open data from the Copernicus programme and the U.S. Geological Survey. The API adds one set of collection ids, one set of band names, explicit value scaling and one error format across both missions.

What the API does

Section titled “What the API does”
Capability Routes Notes
Catalog and search /v1/collections, /v1/search STAC API 1.0, so pystac-client, STAC Browser and QGIS work unchanged
Map tiles /v1/tiles/..., TileJSON Preset mosaics (true colour, false colour, NDVI) for MapLibre, Leaflet and QGIS
Previews .../preview.{format} A quick image of one scene
Process and downloads POST /v1/process, jobs GeoTIFF of chosen bands over an area, with control over units and harmonization
Service /v1/openapi.json, /v1/schema Machine-readable contract and vocabulary

All routes live under https://api.satellitedata.net/v1.

Status: lean v1

Section titled “Status: lean v1”

Lean v1 was deployed on 16 October 2026 and is live at https://api.satellitedata.net/v1 from that date.

The API is being built in phases. The part available now is called lean v1. It runs on Element 84’s Earth Search catalog and the existing tile renderer, and it uses the same paths, ids, band names, parameters and error format as the full v1 contract. Later phases only add to it, so code written against lean v1 keeps working.

Throughout these docs:

  • Available now marks what lean v1 serves.
  • Coming later marks parts of the full v1 contract that are designed but not built yet. Calling one of those routes today returns 404 with the problem code not-found and a detail saying there is no such route or method in lean v1.

Available now

  • Two collections: Sentinel-2 L2A (sentinel-2-l2a) and Landsat 8 and 9 Collection 2 Level-2 (landsat-ot-l2).
  • STAC catalog and search, item previews, three render presets (true-color, false-color, ndvi), map tiles and TileJSON.
  • POST /v1/process for GeoTIFF output, with background jobs for outputs too large for one request.
  • API keys in the X-API-Key header. Metadata routes need no key.

Coming later

  • More collections: Landsat 4 to 7, Level-1 archives, HLS, the cross-sensor optical-sr collection, the Copernicus DEM and Sentinel-1.
  • Zonal statistics, time series, WMTS, the unified cloud mask, bandpass_adjusted and nbar harmonization.
  • Accounts, self-service keys, OAuth 2.0 tokens, usage reports and unit metering.
  • An MCP endpoint for AI agents and an openEO endpoint.

Both the lean v1 OpenAPI document and the full v1 contract are browsable in the API reference.

Older hosts

Section titled “Older hosts”

Before api.satellitedata.net, the service ran on two hosts that keep working unchanged: stac.satellitedata.net (search) and tiles.satellitedata.net (tiles and the download API). The web map at map.satellitedata.net uses them. See Older hosts.

Where to go next

Section titled “Where to go next”