| ▲ | Show HN: CIA World Factbook Archive (1990–2025), searchable and exportable(cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev) |
| 195 points by MilkMp 8 hours ago | 45 comments |
| A structured archive of CIA World Factbook data spanning 1990–2025.
It currently includes:
36 editions
281 entities
~1.06M parsed fields
full-text + boolean search
country/year comparisons
map/trend/ranking analysis views
CSV/XLSX/PDF export
The goal is to preserve long-horizon public-domain government data and make cross-year analysis practical.
Live: https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev
About/method details: https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/about
Data source is the CIA World Factbook (public domain).
Not affiliated with the CIA or U.S. Government. |
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| ▲ | eddythompson80 13 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| Cool project. The world population seems to be double counted. I think https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/analysis/trends |
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| ▲ | MilkMp a few seconds ago | parent | next [-] | | Found the root cause. The "World" entity (population ~8 billion) was being called alongside all individual countries, doubling the total. Thank you again! | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 8 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Will fix right now! I think I was looking at this for too long and missed some things. Thank you :) |
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| ▲ | roysting an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hi. Nice project. One issue though; if you go to the Factbook for any year[1], the link to the entry for “Germany”[2] will take you to the entry for the Gambia for every year I have checked. I have not noticed any other countries where that happens. [1] https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/archive/2002 [2] https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/archive/2002/GM |
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| ▲ | tjsch 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I found another example: searching for "Nicaragua" takes you to the page for "Niger". | | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 33 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Hi there, I have located the root cause and will be fixing the issue: Root cause: CIA uses FIPS codes (CanonicalCode), which differ from ISO Alpha-2 for many countries. Templates and SQL queries prioritized CanonicalCode over ISOAlpha2, so URL codes like /archive/2025/AU matched the wrong country. Australia (AU) -> American Samoa (AS = CIA FIPS for Australia)
Singapore (SG) -> Senegal (SG = CIA FIPS for Senegal)
Germany (DE) -> Gambia (GM = CIA FIPS for Germany) |
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| ▲ | b8 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| 2025-2026 is available (to purchase/read outside or ur site) and the last version 2026-2027 is planed for release on April 7th, https://www.amazon.com/CIA-World-Factbook-2026-2027-ebook/dp.... |
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| ▲ | crims0n an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Somehow it escaped me that these were published books as well. Thank you kind stranger. | |
| ▲ | toomuchtodo 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Internet Archive has 2025-2026 in their possession, should make it into OpenLibrary eventually once scanned. | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Will add to this once it's out. Thanks for sending this :) | | |
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| ▲ | ggm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is an archive of the service which is being shut down under the current WH administration? |
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| ▲ | kshri24 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There is a bug in the time series charts. Data needs to be normalized prior to charting. For example: https://cia-factbook-archive.fly.dev/archive/field/IN/Broadb... |
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| ▲ | 3eb7988a1663 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Just an incredible service. Really appreciate that you put all of your backend work into the open. |
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| ▲ | celeryd 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Any way to download them all at once? |
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| ▲ | MilkMp 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hey there, will add the feature. Wasn't sure if people's computers could handle it all in one, lol, but will make it available in the data export page. | | |
| ▲ | ngcc_hk 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Not all. But some may. And in case you were shut down someone else can continue and one day it may be resurfaced perhaps even in USA. |
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| ▲ | cwnyth 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Kudos! I was working on doing this as well, so it's nice to see it already done. |
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| ▲ | ronald_petty 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I like the timeline feature. Maybe I need to spend more time, but to see political changes / borders / etc. would all be great! Keep up the good work. |
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| ▲ | FergusArgyll 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Nice! One thing; you're supposed to write "Cannot confirm or deny my affiliation with the CIA" |
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| ▲ | sailfast 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That’s a bit of a canary is it not? You don’t need to say that and wouldn’t know to say that unless you had worked in the space or wanted us to think you did :) | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Thanks, I will change it! |
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| ▲ | nubg 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Site loads very slowly for me. Tried various devices and networks. Same for a friend of mine overseas. |
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| ▲ | MilkMp 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Will scale the website | | |
| ▲ | nubg 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | To clarify, I am a shill for fly.io and wanted to get you to spend more money by scaling it up. The site loaded instantaneously on the first try, so fast I thought it was local. | |
| ▲ | Betelbuddy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You should include this one, will also go away soon most likely: https://www.cia.gov/resources/cia-maps/ | | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I'll start working on this now! Thank you for sending it! It will be interesting to see if I can incorporate them into the globes or when the country info pops up! |
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| ▲ | daveelkan 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| found a bug: Australia links to American Samoa in 2025 archive. |
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| ▲ | stephen_g 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes I noticed that too, and clicking on Austria takes you to Australia instead! (AU instead of AT which is Austria's country code) Then when you actually are in Australia, if you click back to 2001 or earlier it changes to 'Ashmore and Cartier Islands' | | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 17 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Hi there, I have located the root and sent out a bug fix. Root cause: The CIA World Factbook, published by the Central Intelligence Agency, uses the U.S. Government's FIPS 10-4 country codes, which differ from the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 codes used by the rest of the world. Of the 281 entities in our database, 173 have different FIPS and ISO codes. Our lookups matched FIPS codes first, so when codes collided between the two systems, the wrong country was loaded. Fixed all 13 queries and 6 templates to always prefer ISO over FIPS. Examples fixed: Australia (ISO=AU) was loading American Samoa (FIPS=AQ, but Australia's FIPS=AS collides with American Samoa's ISO=AS)
Singapore (ISO=SG) was loading Senegal (FIPS=SG)
Germany (ISO=DE) was loading Gambia (FIPS=GM = Germany's FIPS, ISO=GM = Gambia)
Bahamas (ISO=BS) was loading Burkina Faso (FIPS=BF = Bahamas' FIPS, ISO=BF = Burkina Faso) | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Will fix. Thank you! Most likely a grouping problem due to the MasterCountry ID. |
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| ▲ | gbennett71 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Confirmed, affects multiple years' data |
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| ▲ | RobRivera 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Hurray! I didnt discover this until I saw the recent post about its deactivation. |
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| ▲ | ohyoutravel 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is pretty basic but kinda neat. A good way to browse the fact books like a website. Definitely could use more features but imo superior than flipping through a PDF. |
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| ▲ | MilkMp 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Originally, my plan was just to create the archive, but I have expanded the scope, lol. | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Hey, what features would you like to see?? | | |
| ▲ | ix101 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hi, thanks for this! Not sure if you're aware that clicking Australia goes to American Samoa, similar issue with some others that I encountered (Bahamas -> Burkina faso). | | |
| ▲ | MilkMp 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Hi there, I have located the root and sent out a bug fix. Root cause: The CIA World Factbook, published by the Central Intelligence Agency, uses the U.S. Government's FIPS 10-4 country codes, which differ from the ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 codes used by the rest of the world. Of the 281 entities in our database, 173 have different FIPS and ISO codes. Our lookups matched FIPS codes first, so when codes collided between the two systems, the wrong country was loaded. Fixed all 13 queries and 6 templates to always prefer ISO over FIPS. Examples fixed: Australia (ISO=AU) was loading American Samoa (FIPS=AQ, but Australia's FIPS=AS collides with American Samoa's ISO=AS)
Singapore (ISO=SG) was loading Senegal (FIPS=SG)
Germany (ISO=DE) was loading Gambia (FIPS=GM = Germany's FIPS, ISO=GM = Gambia)
Bahamas (ISO=BS) was loading Burkina Faso (FIPS=BF = Bahamas' FIPS, ISO=BF = Burkina Faso) |
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| ▲ | nephihaha 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What is its copyright status? |
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| ▲ | MilkMp 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The data from the CIA World Factbook is in the public domain (being a U.S. Government work) and is free for anyone to use. The ETL scripts and data tools available in the GitHub repository are open source and licensed under the MIT License. However, the web application itself is proprietary software, with all rights reserved. |
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| ▲ | shevy-java 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Hmm. It's kind of weird, because I think I actually used it in the 1990s, probably shortly before Wikipedia emerged. Ever since Wikipedia, I don't think I used the CIA world Factbook much at all, so in a way I guess this partly explains why the website is now defunct. But I am a tiny bit sad that it is gone, if only for a piece of nostalgia from the 1990s era. I think we need to be careful - yes, wikipedia has that information, but we kind of lose websites here. That is a potential danger, because we end up with more and more of a monopoly which is rarely good (ok, wikipedia may be an exception but it also has intrinsic quality issues; it is still excellent in many ways but not perfect, and we may get tunnel vision the more websites vanish - just look at the AI slop autogenerated "content" or "affiliate" links you see in a google search, if anyone is still using that). |
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| ▲ | MilkMp 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Glad I was able to get the original fact book data that other archivists have gathered over the years- Project Gutenberg (plain text), Wayback Machine (HTML zips and factbook.jsons, and one from the agency's websites | |
| ▲ | cwnyth 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Wikipedia has some consistency issues and often linked to the CIA Factbook as well. | |
| ▲ | orhmeh09 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | World facts provided by the CIA, too, have intrinsic quality issues. I'm not too worried! |
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