# WiseCost API overview

- URL: https://www.usewisecost.com/help/api/wisecost-api-overview
- Audience: Admins
- Last updated: 2026-09-19
- Part of the WiseCost Help Center: https://www.usewisecost.com/help

> The WiseCost API is a read-only REST API for time activities, catalogs and posted labor journal lines, built for data warehouses, BI tools and reconciliation.

The WiseCost API is a read-only REST API over your company's data. Use it to take your time data to a data warehouse or a BI tool, or to reconcile WiseCost against another system. It reads time activities, catalogs such as employees, classes and projects, and the journal lines posted by Labor Distribution. It never exposes compensation data.

**Who this is for:** Administrators, and the developers, data teams or integrators they work with.

[Open the API reference](https://app.usewisecost.com/api/docs)

## What you can read

- **Time activities**, with a feed of deletions, so you can keep an incremental copy in sync without downloading everything again.
- **Catalogs:** employees, classes, projects, items, locations, timesheets and payroll periods.
- **Labor distribution:** the journal lines that Labor Distribution posted.

## Typical uses

- Load hours into a data warehouse and join them with your other data.
- Build dashboards in a BI tool: hours by contract, by award, by person.
- Reconcile WiseCost against a project management, billing or grants system.

## Things to know before you build

- **Read-only.** The API does not create or change anything in WiseCost.
- **No compensation data.** Salaries and pay rates are not exposed.
- **Rate limit.** Each key has a limit of requests per minute.
- **Pagination by cursor.** Lists are paged with a cursor, not with page numbers.
- **Scopes.** Each key can read only what its scopes allow: `time_activities:read`, `catalog:read` and `labor_distribution:read`.

Everything else, including a sync guide for integrators, is in the API reference. The OpenAPI specification is at [app.usewisecost.com/api/v1/openapi.json](https://app.usewisecost.com/api/v1/openapi.json).

## Get started

1. An admin creates a key. See [Creating and managing API keys](https://www.usewisecost.com/help/api/creating-and-managing-api-keys).
2. Your developer opens the API reference and makes the first request with that key.

For a one-time file instead of an integration, export CSV from [Time Activities](https://www.usewisecost.com/help/time-tracking/reviewing-time-activities).

## Common questions

### How do I export WiseCost time data to my own database?

Create an API key with the `time_activities:read` scope and read the time activities endpoint incrementally, using the deletions feed to stay in sync. The sync guide in the API reference has the details.

### Can the API write time entries?

No. It is read-only.

### Does the API expose salaries or pay rates?

No. Compensation data is not available through the API.