BBC iPlayer Live Channel & Catch-Up Data API · Live

Pull live BBC iPlayer data down to the catch-up window, the nations variant.

Live simulcast of BBC One, Two, Three, Four, News, and Parliament, 30-day catch-up availability windows, TV Licence requirement flags, and nations and regional content variants — structured and delivered as clean JSON or CSV. No proxies to manage, no CAPTCHAs to solve, no HTML to parse.

See a Live Response

4 BBC iPlayer verticals covered

<3s avg. response time

13M+ requests / month served

99.9% uptime SLA

GET /v1/bbciplayer/title

LIVE

// streaming a live catalog pull...

Why Choose Our BBC iPlayer API

Public-service streaming runs on rules no commercial platform uses.

Between a 30-day catch-up window that governs exactly when a programme disappears rather than an open-ended licensing term, a TV Licence requirement tied to legal access rather than a subscription price, and nations and regional variants that mean BBC Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland opt-outs carry genuinely different schedules, BBC iPlayer's catalog carries more regulatory and regional structure than a standard streaming feed. Our infrastructure absorbs that complexity so your team just calls an endpoint and gets data back.

01

Zero blocking, zero maintenance

We run rotating residential IPs, headless rendering, and CAPTCHA-solving behind every request. When BBC iPlayer changes its layout, we patch our parsers — your integration never breaks.

02

Catch-up-window aware

Every programme response includes its specific catch-up expiry date, not a generic availability flag.

03

TV Licence & nations detail

We resolve TV Licence requirement status and nations/regional variant with the same structured fields as core catalog data.

04

Built for scale from day one

From a 100-title test batch to millions of daily checks across the catalog, the same endpoint and response shape scale with you.

BBC iPlayer API Features

Everything you need to keep BBC iPlayer data flowing.

⚡

Real-time extraction

Trigger an on-demand pull for any title, channel, or keyword and get a fresh response — not a stale cache.

🧩

Custom field selection

Request only the fields you need — genre, catch-up expiry, nations variant — to cut payload size and parsing time.

⏳

Catch-up-expiry resolution

Get the specific catch-up availability window and expiry date broken out per programme.

🗂️

Bulk & scheduled requests

Submit thousands of title IDs in one batch job or schedule recurring pulls on an hourly, daily, or custom cadence.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Nations-variant detection

Flag BBC Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland regional opt-outs automatically on eligible programmes.

📊

Catalog history tracking

Store and query programme-availability history to power catalog-churn and archive-retention analysis.

What Data Can You Access?

Every field a programme page shows — catch-up and licence detail included.

CoreContent ID & titleProgramme, series, live channel, or Box Set type

LiveChannel name & simulcast scheduleBBC One, Two, Three, Four, News, Parliament

Catch-UpAvailability window & expiry dateTypically 30 days from broadcast

LicenceTV Licence requirement flagLegal access requirement

CatalogGenre & original broadcast dateRuntime, content rating

Box SetFull-series binge-drop flagSeason & episode count

NationsRegional variant flagScotland, Wales & NI opt-outs

GeoUK-only geo-restriction flagNo international availability

MediaThumbnail & clip linkProgramme imagery

ReviewsRatings & review countUser rating breakdown

StructureChannel & genre breadcrumbsFull catalog hierarchy

QualityResolution optionsSD/HD availability

Supported BBC iPlayer Verticals

Live channels, Box Sets, news, and nations content — one integration covers all of it.

Switch the vertical parameter to pull from a different BBC iPlayer category with the same consistent response shape.

📺

Live BBC Channels

BBC One, Two, Three, Four & News simulcast.

📦

Box Sets

Full-series binge-drop releases.

🗞️

News & Current Affairs

BBC News & BBC Parliament live coverage.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Nations & Regional Content

Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland variants.

CoverageUK-onlyStrict geo-restriction, no international access

Catch-Up30-day catch-upAvailability window resolved per programme

FreshnessReal-timeCatalog and schedule checked on every request

BBC iPlayer API Endpoints

A small set of endpoints that cover the whole catalog lifecycle.

Method	Endpoint	Description	Typical use
GET	/v1/bbciplayer/title	Full programme detail by content ID or name	Catalog & metadata monitoring
GET	/v1/bbciplayer/channel	Live channel detail including simulcast schedule	Live simulcast tracking
GET	/v1/bbciplayer/search	Genre, channel, or keyword search results	Catalog & competitor discovery
GET	/v1/bbciplayer/reviews	Paginated programme reviews	Sentiment analysis
GET	/v1/bbciplayer/catch-up	Catch-up availability window & expiry date	Expiry-window tracking
POST	/v1/bbciplayer/bulk	Submit up to 10,000 title IDs per batch job	Catalog-wide monitoring
GET	/v1/bbciplayer/regional	Nations & regional variant detail per programme	Regional-content mapping

Live API Response Example

This is exactly what comes back. No extra parsing needed.

Popular BBC iPlayer API Use Cases

Built for the teams that live and die by public-service broadcast data.

⏳

Catch-up-window/expiry tracking

Feed live catch-up expiry dates into your tracking tools every few minutes.

📡

Live-channel simulcast schedule monitoring

Track programming schedules across BBC One, Two, Three, and Four.

📦

Box Set release-cadence tracking

Monitor how frequently full-series Box Sets drop by genre.

📋

TV Licence-gating research

Study which content types require an active TV Licence to access.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Nations/regional content-variant mapping

Compare Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland schedule opt-outs.

🎭

Cast/crew filmography mapping

Build filmography graphs across actors, directors, and presenters.

🤖

ML training data

Generate labeled catalog, channel, and rating datasets for recommendation systems.

🏆

Competitive benchmarking

Track how BBC iPlayer catalog compares against ITVX, Channel 4, and My5.

How the BBC iPlayer API Works

From API key to structured data in five steps.

1

Get your API key

Sign up and generate a key from your dashboard in under two minutes.

2

Choose an endpoint

Pick /title, /channel, /reviews or /catch-up depending on what you need.

3

Send the request

Call the endpoint with a content ID, programme name, or channel plus your vertical parameter.

4

We handle the hard part

Proxies, headless rendering, CAPTCHA-solving, and parsing all happen behind the scenes.

5

Receive structured data

Get clean JSON or CSV back in seconds, ready to drop into your pipeline.

Developer-Friendly Integration

Built by people who read the docs too.

One consistent JSON schema across every endpoint and every vertical. No SDK lock-in — plain REST calls work from any language or platform.

→

Predictable REST design

Standard HTTP verbs, query params, and status codes — nothing proprietary to learn.

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JSON, CSV, or webhook delivery

Get results inline, as a downloadable file, or pushed to your endpoint when a batch job finishes.

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Sandbox & test keys

Free sandbox environment with sample title IDs so you can build before you pay.

→

Postman collection & SDK snippets

Import a ready-made collection or copy request snippets for Python, Node.js, and cURL.

Quickstart

API Performance & Reliability

Numbers we publish because we track them daily.

99.9%

Uptime SLA

<3s

Avg. response time

98.8%

Successful extraction rate

7K+

Concurrent requests supported

Security & Compliance

Compliant by design, not as an afterthought.

🔒

Encrypted in transit

All requests and responses travel over TLS 1.2+. API keys can be scoped and rotated anytime.

⚖️

UK GDPR & global alignment

Our extraction workflows are built around UK GDPR alongside EU GDPR and CCPA guidelines.

🌐

Public-data-only policy

We collect only publicly accessible catalog and schedule data — never login-gated or private account information.

✓ISO 9001:2015 Certified ✓ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Certified ✓IAF Multilateral Recognition ✓GDPR-aligned workflows

API Documentation & Resources

Everything to go from key to production.

Guide

Quickstart Guide

Get your first API response back in under five minutes.

Read guide →

Reference

Full API Reference

Every endpoint, parameter, and response field documented in detail.

View reference →

Tool

Postman Collection

Import ready-made requests for every BBC iPlayer API endpoint.

Download →

Code

SDKs & Code Samples

Python, Node.js, PHP, and Ruby snippets for every use case.

Browse samples →

Frequently Asked Questions

Still deciding? Here's what most teams ask first.

We collect only publicly accessible catalog and schedule data using automated tools, following publicly available web-data guidelines. We recommend reviewing your own use case with legal counsel, especially for redistribution.

Every request to /title, /channel, and /catch-up triggers a live pull — you're not reading from a stale cache. Catalog and schedule detail are checked live on every request.

Yes. The /catch-up endpoint returns the specific availability window and expiry date wherever BBC iPlayer publishes that detail — typically 30 days from broadcast.

Yes — the /regional endpoint returns Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland opt-out variants using the same response schema as national programming.

Our infrastructure retries automatically across a rotating proxy pool. You're only billed for successfully returned responses.

Yes, every account starts with a free sandbox key and sample credits so you can test all endpoints before committing to a plan.

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