Making data available for independent research
Meta provides a variety of data sets for researchers. Use this page to find the best fit for your work. Consult the chart below to verify that the data you want is available in the data set you’re requesting.
Ad Library tools
Ad Library
The Ad Library provides advertising transparency by offering a comprehensive, searchable collection of all ads currently running from across Meta Products, including Instagram.
Ad Library Report
The Ad Library Report allows users to explore, filter and download data for ads about social issues, elections or politics. Users can see overall spending totals, spending by specific advertisers and spend data by geographic location.
Ad Library API
The Ad Library API allows you to perform customized keyword searches of ads stored in the Ad Library. You can search data for all active and inactive ads about social issues, elections or politics.
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CrowdTangle
CrowdTangle is a public insights tool from Meta that makes it easy to follow, analyze, and report on what’s happening across social media. By providing privacy-safe public data and products, CrowdTangle has become the best way for outside organizations to have greater transparency into what’s happening on Facebook and Instagram. Click the button below to request access to CrowdTangle.
CrowdTangle provides engagement metrics and analytics for public pages, public groups, verified profiles, and public Instagram accounts.
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Data for Good
Meta's Data for Good program includes tools built from privacy-protected data on the Facebook platform, as well as tools developed using commercially and publicly available sources like satellite imagery and census data.
Access all publicly available Data for Good data sets here.
Population Density Maps
Our high-resolution maps are created using machine learning techniques to identify buildings from commercially available satellite images and overlaid with general population estimates based on publicly available census data and other population statistics. Data is available for over 150 countries.
Future of Business Survey
In partnership with the World Bank and OECD, the Future of Business surveys the millions of small businesses on Facebook biannually. Countries available depend on the survey wave but generally include over 100 countries.
Electrical Distribution Grid Maps
This predictive model maps medium-voltage electrical distribution infrastructure in any country. Data are available publicly in six African countries.
The Inclusive Internet Index
The Inclusive Internet Index measures whether the internet is accessible and affordable, and how much it enables social and economic mobility, in countries around the world. Data are publicly available for 86 countries.
Movement Range Maps
Movement Range Maps inform researchers and public health experts about how populations are responding to physical distancing measures in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. These data sets have two different metrics: Change in Movement and Stay Put. The Change in Movement metric looks at how much people are moving around and compares it to a baseline period that predates most social distancing measures. The Stay Put metric looks at the fraction of the population that appears to stay within a small area surrounding their home for an entire day. Data are available publicly for around 150 countries. Learn more about Movement Range Maps on our blog.
COVID-19 Trends and Impact Survey
This survey was promoted to Facebook users daily to help academic partners learn about COVID-19 vaccine acceptance, preventive behavior and symptoms. The survey was conducted in partnership with University of Maryland (UMD) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). As of June 25, 2022, the survey will no longer collect new data, but historical data will remain available.
COVID-19 Preventive Health Survey
The Preventive Health Survey is designed to help policymakers and health researchers better monitor and understand people’s knowledge, attitudes and practices about COVID-19. The survey is fielded in 67 countries and territories with data available from MIT. Learn more about the Preventive Health Survey on our blog.
COVID-19 forecasts
Meta AI builds adaptive models and collaborates with experts to help the world better understand the spread of the virus. The COVID-19 forecasts produced by the models gives researchers and public health experts information that can help them with resource planning and allocation and early outbreak detection. These forecasts are developed using public, non-Meta data, and serve as a tool to support our global efforts to keep people informed as the pandemic evolves. Our data-driven methods achieve strong performance when compared to other state of the art forecasts.
Additional Data for Good data sets require a license agreement.
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Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT)
FORT provides academics and independent researchers with the tools and data they need to study Meta’s impact on the world, with a focus on elections, democracy, and well-being. Learn more about the data sets we’ve released and apply for access.
Ad Targeting Transparency data sets
Targeting information for more than 1.65 million social issues, electoral, and political Facebook ads that ran during the three-month period prior to Election Day in the United States, from August 3 to November 3, 2020. Specifically, this includes an Ad Targeting data set (the targeting information selected by advertisers running social issues, election, and political ads but as a privacy protective measure, excluding ads with fewer than 100 impressions) and an Ad Library data set (social issues, election, and political ads that are part of the Ad Library product) so that researchers can analyze the ads and targeting information in the same environment.
Learn more in the Meta Research blog post on election-related ad data sets for researchers here.
URL Shares data set
The URL Shares data set includes differentially private individual-level counts of the number of people who viewed, clicked, liked, commented, shared, or reacted to any URL (for any URL with at least 100 public shares) on Facebook between January 2017 and July 2019. Counts are aggregated at the level of country, year-month, age bracket, gender, and for U.S. users, political page affinity. The URL Shares data set is regularly updated to add additional year-months and countries. To maintain the independence of researchers who use these data, access to the URL Shares is granted by Social Science One. New researchers are onboarded once per quarter and access is governed by a Research Data Agreement.
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