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Rgbif

Interface to the Global Biodiversity Information Facility API

From ropensci·Updated June 22, 2026·View on GitHub·

**rgbif** is an R package which gives you access to [GBIF](https://www.gbif.org/) mediated data via its [REST API](https://www.gbif.org/developer/summary). The project is written primarily in R, distributed under the Other license, first published in 2011. Key topics include: api, biodiversity, data, gbif, lifewatch.

Latest release: v3.8.5rgbif v3.8.5
March 23, 2026View Changelog →

rgbif <img src="man/figures/logo.png" align="right" alt="" width="120">

Project Status: Active – The project has reached a stable, usable state and is being actively developed.
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rgbif is an R package which gives you access to GBIF mediated data via its REST API.

GBIF (the Global Biodiversity Information Facility) is an international network and data infrastructure funded by the world's governments and aimed at providing anyone, anywhere, open access to data about all types of life on Earth.

Installation

r
install.packages("rgbif") # CRAN version
r
pak::pkg_install("ropensci/rgbif") # dev version
r
install.packages("rgbif", repos="https://dev.ropensci.org") # dev version

Getting Started

There are several long-form articles that can help get you started:

Most GBIF users are interested in getting lat-lon occurrence records.

r
occ_search(scientificName = "Pan troglodytes") occ_data(scientificName = "Pan troglodytes")

It is usually better to get occurrence records using a taxonKey. See the article Working With Taxonomic Names.

r
taxonKey <- name_backbone("Pan troglodytes")$usageKey occ_search(taxonKey = taxonKey)

GBIF strongly recommends the use of occ_download() rather than occ_search() for serious research projects. See article Getting Occurrence Data From GBIF.

If repeated requests are made to the GBIF search API via occ_search(), users will be temporatily paused for 5 seconds. Please use occ_download() for bulk downloads.

It is required to set up your GBIF credentials to make downloads from GBIF.

r
occ_download(pred("taxonKey", 5219534)) # 5219534 is the taxonKey for Pan troglodytes

Citation

Under the terms of the GBIF data user agreement, users who download data agree to cite a DOI. Please see GBIF’s citation guidelines and Citing GBIF Mediated Data.

Please also cite rgbif by running citation(package = "rgbif").

Contributors

This list honors all contributors in alphabetical order. Code contributors are in bold.

adamdsmith - AgustinCamacho - AldoCompagnoni - AlexPeap - andzandz11 - AshleyWoods - AugustT - barthoekstra - benmarwick - cathynewman - cboettig - coyotree - damianooldoni - dandaman - djokester - dlebauer - dmcglinn - dmi3kno - dnoesgaard - DupontCai - ecology-data-science - EDiLD - elgabbas - emhart - fxi - ghost - gkburada - hadley - Huasheng12306 - ibartomeus - JanLauGe - jarioksa - jeroen - jhnwllr - jhpoelen - jivelasquezt - jkmccarthy - johnbaums - jtgiermakowski - jwhalennds - karthik - kgturner - Kim1801 - ljuliusson - ljvillanueva - luisDVA - martinpfannkuchen - MattBlissett - MattOates - maxhenschell - mdsumner - no-la-ngo - Octoberweather - omahs - Pakillo - peterdesmet - PhillRob - PietrH - poldham - qgroom - raymondben - rossmounce - sacrevert - sagitaninta - sckott - scottsfarley93 - simon-tarr - SriramRamesh - stevenpbachman - stevensotelo - stevenysw - TomaszSuchan - tphilippi - vandit15 - vervis - vijaybarve - willgearty - Xuletajr - yvanlebras - zixuan75

Meta

  • Please report any issues or bugs.
  • License: MIT
  • Get citation information for rgbif in R doing citation(package = 'rgbif')
  • Please note that this package is released with a Contributor Code of Conduct. By contributing to this project, you agree to abide by its terms.

There are similar GBIF clients in other languages :

This package is part of spocc, along with several other packages, that provide access to occurrence records from multiple data sources.

Contributors

Showing top 12 contributors by commit count.

View all contributors on GitHub →

This article is auto-generated from ropensci/rgbif via the GitHub API.Last fetched: 6/25/2026