A free, super simple, hosted API for getting Google Sheets as JSON.

Tutorial blog post: benborgers.com/posts/google-sheets-json

If you have questions: benborgers@hey.com

This API returns a given Google Sheet's rows as JSON data.

In order to use it:

1. The first row of your Google Sheet should be a header row (here's an example).
2. Link sharing must be turned on so anyone with the link can view the Google Sheet.

The format for this API is:

https://opensheet.elk.sh/spreadsheet_id/tab_name

For example:

https://opensheet.elk.sh/1o5t26He2DzTweYeleXOGiDjlU4Jkx896f95VUHVgS8U/Test+Sheet

You can also replace tab_name with the tab number (in the order that the tabs are arranged), if you don't know the name. For example, to get the first sheet:

https://opensheet.elk.sh/1o5t26He2DzTweYeleXOGiDjlU4Jkx896f95VUHVgS8U/1

Take note that the first sheet in order is numbered 1, not 0.

Adding the ?raw=true URL parameter returns the raw, unformatted data from the sheet. Without this parameter, Google Sheets formats numbers, dates, and other data types, but with ?raw=true, you'll get the underlying values.

Responses are cached for 30 seconds in order to improve performance and to avoid hitting Google Sheets' rate limits, so it might take up to 30 seconds for fresh edits to show up in the API response.

The base URL is now opensheet.elk.sh, not opensheet.vercel.app. opensheet.vercel.app will continue to redirect to the correct URL, but you should update your code to use opensheet.elk.sh to avoid the slight performance degradation that comes from needing to redirect.

This section is only necessary if you want to fork opensheet and host your own instance of it. If you don't want to deal with that, you're welcome to use my hosted instance at opensheet.elk.sh.

opensheet is written as a Bun server. It uses Redis for caching and PostgreSQL for analytics.

If you host opensheet yourself, you'll need:

1. A Redis instance (Bun's built-in redis client is used)
2. A PostgreSQL database (Bun's built-in sql client is used)
3. A Google Sheets API key:
   1. Go to the Google Cloud Console and create a new project from the top navigation bar.
   2. Search for "Google Sheets API" and enable it.
   3. Search for "Credentials" and create an API key. If you want, you can restrict it to only be able to access the Google Sheets API.
   4. Set the GOOGLE_API_KEY environment variable.

bun run dev