Microsoft Learn Catalog API feature overview

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The Microsoft Learn Catalog API is a REST-based Web API lets you send a web-based query to Microsoft Learn and get back details about the available training content and certification exams such as titles, products covered, levels, links to training, and other metadata and returns a JSON-encoded response with the information.

It returns information about all publicly available:

  • Modules
  • Units
  • Learning Paths
  • Applied Skills
  • Certifications
  • Exams
  • Instructor-Led Courses

Note

As a part of the recent Microsoft Learn site update, there is a new Catalog API endpoint available on the learn.microsoft.com domain. The old endpoint will still work as expected, but the benefits of switching to the new endpoint are that it will give you enhanced features such as additional query parameters.

Use cases

  • View metadata about Microsoft Learn training and/or certification offerings
  • Pull a list of the Microsoft Learn training and/or certification offerings in order to link to them from your own online experience

How the Learn Catalog API works

The API is a REST-based Web API that returns a JSON-encoded response. To request the full catalog, send a GET request to:

https://learn.microsoft.com/api/catalog/

The output will look similar to the screenshot below. As of November 2022, the full response is roughly 13 MB.

Screenshot of the Learn Catalog API output in Visual Studio Code.

Each learning catalog item is an object, with a set of metadata available for each. The full data dictionary and other options are listed in the Microsoft Learn Catalog API developer documentation. We also have release notes (link) to see what the latest updates are, and best practices information.

If you’re interested in using it, check out the Get Started with the Microsoft Learn Catalog API using cURL and Visual Studio Code article.

Requirements

There's no authentication required to access the Microsoft Learn Catalog API. Users can use their preferred API requesting method, such as cURL, Postman, etc.

Examples

Below are a few of the many ways we see users using the Learn Catalog API:

  • Viva Learning has used the Learn Catalog API to offer the Microsoft Learn catalog as a part of its core experience.
  • Organizations and educational institutions use the Learn Catalog API to pull catalog information and post it in their internal learning management systems (LMS), so their employees and students can easily access it.
  • Learning providers use the Learn Catalog API to pull catalog information and post it in their customer learning experiences.

Availability and pricing

The Microsoft Learn Catalog API is publicly available and offered under the term of the Microsoft APIs Terms of Use. There's no charge to use the API.

Limitations

  • The API contains publicly available modules, units, learning paths, instructor-led courses, exams, and certifications. It doesn't output documentation, code samples, shows, or events at this time.
  • The API refreshes at least one time per day.
  • Updates to the API version will be communicated via updates to the Learn Catalog API Release Notes.

Next steps

To learn more about the Learn Catalog API, review the following articles: