Bulk data

Every number the site displays is downloadable here. The data is free to reuse — including commercially — with attribution. There is no signup, no key, and no rate limit on these files.

Downloads

State Freedom Index 2026 CSV

All 50 states plus DC, overall score and all ten category scores. One row per jurisdiction.

State Freedom Index 2026 JSON

Same scores as the CSV, plus per-category source attribution and confidence inline with every record.

World Freedom Index 2026 CSV

Country-level scores across the same ten categories, blended from Fraser, Freedom House, V-Dem and WJP.

Policy Variable Catalog CSV

The individual policies the index is being rebuilt onto — with weights, rationale, and sources. Definitions only; no values coded yet.

How to cite

Editions are versioned and immutable: once an edition is published its numbers never change, so a citation stays valid. Corrections are issued as a new edition and logged on the corrections page.

FreedomRankings. "State Freedom Index, 2026 edition."
  https://freedomrankings.com/data (accessed YYYY-MM-DD).

Licensed CC BY 4.0. Attribution to FreedomRankings.com is required; a link is sufficient.

Data dictionary

Column definitions for the state index files.

Column	Type	Description
rank	integer	Position in the 50-state ranking, 1 = freest. Empty for DC and territories, which are tracked but deliberately unranked.
state	string	Full jurisdiction name.
code	string	Two-letter USPS postal code.
overall_score	float	Weighted mean of the ten category scores, scaled 0–100. Equal weights by default.
<category name>	float	One column per category, scored 0–10. Higher is freer in every category — direction is already applied.

Category columns, in file order: 1st Amendment, 2nd Amendment, 4th Amendment, Economic Freedom, Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, Property Rights, Religious Liberty, Education Choice, Regulatory Burden.

Policy variable catalog — 54 of 250 defined

Today's category scores are derived from published third-party indices. We are rebuilding them onto individually documented policy variables so that a reader can ask why a state scores what it does and get an answer that resolves to a statute.

The catalog above is definitions only. No state has been scored on these variables yet — coding them requires reading the statute in each jurisdiction, and each coded value will carry its own citation and retrieval date. We publish the catalog first, weights included, so the methodology can be argued with before any number depends on it.

Accountability Index components

Per-official accountability scores are available from the API at /v1/officials/:id, with every component and its underlying counts included so the composite can be reproduced or disputed. Methodology version 1.0.0.

Disclosure timeliness — 30%
Share of stock transactions reported within the 45-day statutory deadline. Source: House Clerk / Senate PRD Periodic Transaction Reports (STOCK Act).
Vote participation — 25%
Share of recorded roll-call votes on which the member cast Yea, Nay, or Present rather than not voting. Source: Congress.gov / House Clerk / Senate roll-call records.
Disclosure filing record — 20%
Whether an annual Personal Financial Disclosure is on file for the most recent required year. Source: House Clerk / Senate Public Records annual PFD filings.
Committee conflict exposure — 15%
Share of disclosed trades in sectors overseen by a committee the member sits on. Source: PTR filings cross-referenced against committee jurisdiction (House/Senate rules).
Funding concentration — 10%
How concentrated itemized campaign receipts are among the largest donors. Source: FEC itemized receipts (Schedule A).

Need programmatic access instead of files? See the API documentation. Researchers and journalists can request a free higher-limit key. Writing a paper or a class project? The student research guide has ready-made citations in APA, MLA, Chicago and BibTeX, plus what each dataset does and does not cover.