5 Free data set sources to use for data science projects

Discover five reliable sources where you can access diverse and high-quality data sets for free, fueling your next data-driven project.

When working on a data-driven project, finding reliable and high-quality data sets is essential. Fortunately, there are several free sources available that provide access to a wide range of data sets across various domains.

However, please pay attention to the data’s quality, documentation and any licensing restrictions associated with each data set. This article will explore five free data set sources that you can utilize for your next project.

Kaggle

Kaggle is a popular platform for data scientists and machine learning enthusiasts. It offers a huge selection of open-access data sets in addition to hosting machine learning competitions. The databases cover a wide range of subjects, including social sciences, healthcare and finance. The community-driven methodology used by Kaggle guarantees that data sets are regularly updated and maintained.

New Kaggle hoodie arrived just in time! @kaggle has launched a very interesting Large Language model competition aimed at answering science based MCQs using (Large) LMs

I’ll end my Kaggle break for this one

It’s the perfect problem for anyone to supercharge their learning! pic.twitter.com/eMKeOnUBZ8

— Sanyam Bhutani (@bhutanisanyam1) July 16, 2023

UCI Machine Learning Repository

The University of California, Irvine’s UCI Machine Learning Repository is a comprehensive collection of data sets that are often utilized in the machine learning community. It provides data sets for many different types of tasks, such as classification, regression and clustering. Each data set in the repository has a full description, a list of attributes and instructions for data preprocessing.

Related: 9 data science project ideas for beginners

Google Dataset Search

A search engine called Google Dataset Search is dedicated to assisting users in discovering publicly accessible data sets. It indexes a huge selection of data sets from many different sources, such as government websites, academic organizations and data repositories. Keyword searches, file type and licensing filters, pertinent metadata and download links are all available when looking for data sets.

The team were developing cancer detection system using Tensorflow at #Megahack Hackathon. Confused about datasets, encouraged them to use Google Dataset Search. #TensorFlow@JeffDean @ialimustufa @ericsk @ksoonson @DynamicWebPaige pic.twitter.com/EKmeQshcc2

— Shubham (@ishubhamsah) January 29, 2020

Data.gov

Data.gov is the official United States government’s open data portal. It provides access to a huge database of data sets from numerous federal agencies on a variety of subjects, including health, the environment, education, transportation and more. The data sets made available by Data.gov are frequently utilized for analysis, research and the creation of data-driven applications. The platform fosters the use of public data for good and advocates transparency.

Related: 15 important data terms you should know

OpenML

OpenML is a platform that encourages collaboration and offers a variety of data sets and machine learning challenges. Users can compare and replicate machine learning experiments, as well as explore, download and donate data sets. OpenML promotes the sharing of data sets, code and results while highlighting the significance of reproducibility in machine learning research.