Philippine Budget Data API

A free, public, read-only API over Philippine national budget data — the enacted General Appropriations Act (FY2020–2026), the FY2027 National Expenditure Program, budget-cycle execution data, and the House budget hearings (what was actually said, topic by topic, with timestamps). Also available as an MCP server for AI agents.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/departments
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/search?q=school%20building"
curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027

The API is free for public use under fair-use conditions. Responses are cached at the edge (Cache-Control: public, max-age=300, s-maxage=3600); data updates at most a few times a year, so aggressive client-side caching is encouraged. Please identify heavy automated use with a descriptive User-Agent.

Datasets & units

Units. Every amount anywhere in this API is an exact Philippine peso figure. Each response's meta restates this ("currency": "PHP", "scale": "pesos"). The upstream source publishes GAA figures in thousands; this API rescales them so you never have to.

Department ids. GAA ids are two digits (07 = Department of Education, 18 = Public Works). The NEP FY2027 dataset uses the same two-digit ids plus two synthetic departments carved out for correctness: SPF (special purpose funds) and AUTO (automatic appropriations).

Conventions

Every endpoint is GET and returns JSON in a common envelope:

{
  "meta": { "dataset": "gaa", "currency": "PHP", "scale": "pesos", ... },
  "data": [ ... ] | { ... },
  "next_cursor": "..." | null        // paginated lists only
}

GAA rows carry per-year figures as a nested map — every year key is always present (zeroed if the source has no row for that year):

"years": { "2020": { "count": 12, "amount": 4491000 }, ..., "2026": { "count": 15, "amount": 5120000 } }

Filtered list endpoints also report whole-result-set totals in meta.matched / meta.matched_amount, so a single request answers "how many and how much in total?" without fetching every page.

Pagination

Large lists use opaque keyset cursors. Take next_cursor from a response and pass it back as cursor; when it is null, the list is exhausted. Cursors are tied to the exact filter combination that produced them — changing any filter invalidates the cursor (you'll get 400 bad_cursor or wrong pages). There is no page-number or offset pagination; cursor performance does not degrade with depth.

Errors

Errors are JSON with a machine-readable slug and a human-readable message:

{ "error": "not_found", "message": "No GAA department 99" }

GAA — General Appropriations Act, FY2020–2026

National totals per fiscal year, summed across all departments.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa

{
  "meta": { "dataset": "gaa", "years": [2020, ..., 2026], "currency": "PHP", "scale": "pesos", "departments": 38 },
  "data": [
    { "year": 2020, "line_items": 725178, "amount": 4100000000000 },
    ...
    { "year": 2026, "line_items": 810081, "amount": 6326000000000 }
  ]
}

All 38 departments with per-year appropriations and line-item counts, largest FY2026 budget first. This is where you discover valid {id} values.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/departments

One department in full: yearly totals, its agencies/bureaus (whose ids work as agency_id filters elsewhere), and the expense-class breakdown.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/departments/07

Personnel Services / MOOE / Financial Expenses / Capital Outlays totals per year.

Program/activity/project (P/A/P) families — raw P/A/P rows deduplicated by normalized name within an agency — ranked by appropriation in the chosen year. Paginated.

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/departments/07/programs?year=2026&q=computerization&limit=5"

UACS object-level line items — the finest granularity in the GAA (DepEd alone has about a million rows). Filter tightly and paginate. Rows with a zero amount in the chosen year are hidden unless include_zero=1.

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/departments/07/objects?year=2026&q=textbooks&limit=10"

Note that free-text search here matches the object-level description (the UACS expense object, e.g. "Textbooks and Instructional Materials"), not program names — search programs with /gaa/search instead.

Search program names across all departments at once — the quickest route from a topic ("school building", "flood control", "irrigation") to who funds it and with how much.

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/search?q=flood%20control&year=2026&limit=10"

One fiscal year in isolation: the national total plus every department's appropriation, line-item count, and share of that year's budget, largest first. The per-year counterpart of /gaa/departments, which returns all seven years per row. This is the API face of the per-year budget browser.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/years/2022

{
  "meta": { "dataset": "gaa", "year": 2022, "departments": 37, ... },
  "data": {
    "total": { "year": 2022, "line_items": 628666, "amount": 5023600000000 },
    "departments": [
      { "id": "07", "slug": "department-of-education-deped", "description": "Department of Education (DepEd)",
        "year": 2022, "line_items": 308586, "amount": 633323678000, "share": 0.12607 },
      ...
    ]
  }
}

Walk one department's hierarchy a level at a time, scoped to a single fiscal year — the same drill the per-year browser does: department → agency (bureau) → program (FPAP) → operating unit → fund → expense class. Rows carry that year's figures only, ranked largest first, and keep their parent-id columns so each row's id feeds the next level's parent. Rows with a zero amount in that year are hidden unless include_zero=1.

# DepEd's bureaus in FY2022
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/years/2022/departments/07/children"

# then programs of one bureau...
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/years/2022/departments/07/children?level=fpaps&parent=07-001"

# ...down to the expense classes of one fund
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/gaa/years/2022/departments/07/children?level=expenses&parent=07-001-310400100002000-0807002-01101101"

NEP FY2027 — National Expenditure Program

The Executive's ₱7.20 T proposal for FY2027, measured line by line against the FY2026 GAA. Every row carries amount, base_amount, delta, and pct (null when the FY2026 baseline is zero, i.e. a new item).

National overview: every department with its delta, expense classes, regions, top funds and programs, and the biggest movers up/down.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027

All 39 departments (including synthetic SPF and AUTO) with amounts, baselines, and per-dimension counts.

Full department view: agencies, programs, expense classes, funds, and regions in full; objects, operating units, and divisions capped at the top 50 with an explicit __other__ remainder row so lists still sum to the department total.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027/departments/07
curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027/departments/SPF

The complete, untruncated list for one dimension within one department, paginated. Dimensions: agency, program, expense_class, fund, region, object, operating_unit, division.

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027/departments/07/rollups/operating_unit?limit=500"

National rollups. Two modes:

• Default — national totals per code in the dimension, summed across all departments. Every dimension is complete, so these sums are exact.
• ?code=X&by=department — one code broken down across departments (e.g. which departments spend in region 13, or on object 5020399000).

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027/rollups/expense_class
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/nep/2027/rollups/region?code=13&by=department"

Budget cycle — NEP → GAA → execution

Dataset manifest and coverage: which departments are included, fiscal years (2018–2026), stages, and expense classes. Scope is Current New Appropriations only — narrower than the main GAA series; do not compare the two directly.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/budget-cycle

For one covered department: its programs (with the source→portal crosswalk and match confidence) and facts — one row per program × fiscal year × stage × expense class.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/budget-cycle/departments/14

Budget hearings — what was said, topic by topic

The House Committee on Appropriations deliberates each agency's proposed budget in hearings that run 2–9 hours. We transcribe the streams (speaker-labelled) and build a deliberation record: not a summary of the hearing, but an account of what transpired on each topic. Machine transcripts are imperfect — names and figures are as heard — so every item carries a timestamp and a url that opens the hearing page with the video at that moment. Treat the records as an index into the video, and verify before you quote.

All hearings, newest first. Filters: fiscal_year, agency (acronym as in the title, e.g. DOH), q (title keyword), limit, offset. has_record says whether the topic record exists; transcript_source says how the transcript was made.

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/hearings?agency=DOH"

Keyword search over every topic record across all hearings — the topic, its summary, question, outcome, and every spoken moment. All terms must match. Each hit returns the topic and the specific matching_moments (timestamp, speaker, what was said, url). Optional fiscal_year, agency, status (resolved | committed | parked | unresolved | informational).

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/hearings/search?q=philhealth%20subsidy"
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/hearings/search?q=flood%20control&status=committed"

One hearing's metadata and its topic index (topic, status, first timestamp, summary, outcome).

The full deliberation record. For each topic: question (what the committee was trying to establish), thread (chronological moments: timestamp, speaker, side, kind, said, url), agency_position, positions, figures (as spoken; amount is a best-effort peso parse), actions (document requests, commitments, motions, rulings), outcome and status. ?thread=0 omits the moment-by-moment thread.

curl https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/hearings/7U4YvhlnbZY/topics
curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/hearings/7U4YvhlnbZY/topics?thread=0"

The proceedings in order — roll call, presentation, each interpellation, motions, suspensions — with per-section summaries, exchanges, figures and actions.

Raw transcript segments for a time window (seconds; default 20 minutes from from, at most 1000 segments), with the inferred speaker name when known.

curl "https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/hearings/7U4YvhlnbZY/transcript?from=3600&to=3900"

OpenAPI specification

A machine-readable OpenAPI 3.1 description of every endpoint, parameter, and schema:

https://budget.bettergov.ph/api/v1/openapi.json

Import it into Postman, Insomnia, or any OpenAPI-aware code generator.

MCP server

The same data is exposed as an MCP server for AI agents — Claude, Cursor, and any other MCP-capable client. The transport is stateless Streamable HTTP: no auth, no sessions, JSON-RPC over POST.

Install in your AI client

Claude Code (CLI)

claude mcp add --transport http ph-budget https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp

Then just ask: "Using ph-budget, which departments gain the most in the FY2027 proposal?"

Claude Desktop & claude.ai

Settings → Connectors → Add custom connector → paste https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp. No authentication is needed; the server is read-only.

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json in a project:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ph-budget": { "url": "https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp" }
  }
}

Windsurf

Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ph-budget": { "serverUrl": "https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp" }
  }
}

VS Code (Copilot Chat)

Run MCP: Add Server… from the command palette (choose HTTP), or add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "ph-budget": { "type": "http", "url": "https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp" }
  }
}

Gemini CLI

Add to ~/.gemini/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ph-budget": { "httpUrl": "https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp" }
  }
}

Anything else

Any client that speaks MCP over Streamable HTTP works: point it at https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp, no auth, no session setup. Most clients accept the generic {"mcpServers": {"ph-budget": {"url": "https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp"}}} shape.

Tools

Example prompts

Once connected, ask your assistant things like:

• "Which departments get the biggest increases in the FY2027 budget proposal, in pesos and in percent?"
• "How much has the government appropriated for flood control programs each year since 2020, and under which departments?"
• "Break down DepEd's FY2026 budget by expense class, then show its largest line items for capital outlays."
• "Which regions gain and which lose in the FY2027 NEP compared to the FY2026 GAA?"
• "For the Department of Health, compare what was proposed (NEP), enacted (GAA), obligated, and disbursed across recent years."
• "What are the special purpose funds in the FY2027 proposal and how much is each?"
• "What did the DOH say in its budget hearing about the PhilHealth subsidy, and what did members demand? Link me to the moments."
• "Across all FY2027 hearings, which topics ended with the agency committing to submit documents?"

How an agent typically chains the tools

A question like "how much of DepEd's 2026 budget is textbooks?" resolves in three calls:

1. list_gaa_departments → find DepEd's id (07)
2. get_gaa_department {"department_id": "07"} → totals and agencies for context
3. search_gaa_line_items {"department_id": "07", "query": "textbooks", "year": 2026} → the matched line items, plus meta.matched_amount answering the question in one number

National "who spends on X?" questions go straight to search_gaa_programs (GAA) or get_nep_2027_rollup with by_department: true (FY2027 proposal).

Raw protocol examples (curl)

The transport is stateless JSON-RPC over POST — you can drive it with curl. Handshake:

curl -X POST https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 1, "method": "initialize",
  "params": { "protocolVersion": "2025-06-18", "capabilities": {},
              "clientInfo": { "name": "curl", "version": "1.0" } }
}'

curl -X POST https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}'

Search flood-control programs across all departments:

curl -X POST https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 3, "method": "tools/call",
  "params": { "name": "search_gaa_programs",
              "arguments": { "query": "flood control", "limit": 3 } }
}'

Break FY2027 spending in NCR (region code 13) down by department:

curl -X POST https://budget.bettergov.ph/mcp -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0", "id": 4, "method": "tools/call",
  "params": { "name": "get_nep_2027_rollup",
              "arguments": { "dimension": "region", "code": "13", "by_department": true, "limit": 5 } }
}'

Tool results arrive as JSON text inside result.content[0].text, in the same envelopes the REST API returns. Invalid inputs come back as a result with isError: true and a message explaining what to fix.

Data sources & attribution

Source data is derived from Department of Budget and Management publications, packaged as the BetterGov.PH GAA dataset. Figures are presented as published; always verify against official DBM documents before citing in formal work. If this API is useful to you, attribution to BetterGov.PH is appreciated.