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§ Developer platform · v1

The Orthodox saints & calendar API

A read-only JSON API for Orthodox saints, hymnography, countries, and the daily feast calendar — Gregorian and Julian. Built on three decades of editorial work from Lives of the Saints. Free tier, no credit card required.

No credit card · 1,000 free requests / month · Cancel anytime

Request — try itbash
curl https://livesofthesaintscalendar.com/api/v1/calendar/today \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer osc_live_…your_key…"
Responsejson
{
  "date": "2026-05-22",
  "calendar": "gregorian",
  "month": 5,
  "day": 22,
  "saints": [
    {
      "slug": "saint-helena",
      "name": "Saint Helena",
      "shortBio": "Mother of Constantine the Great…",
      "feastTitle": "Synaxis of Saint Helena",
      "originCountry": { "slug": "greece", "name": "Greece", "isoCode": "GR" },
      "categories": ["empress", "finder-of-the-true-cross"],
      "url": "/saints/saint-helena"
    }
  ]
}
§ Endpoints

Eight endpoints, one purpose: liturgical truth.

  • GET/v1/saints

    List saints with filters: search, country, patronOf, era, gender, category.

  • GET/v1/saints/{slug}

    Full saint detail — bio, feast days, troparion mode, related saints.

  • GET/v1/saints/{slug}/hymnography

    Troparion, kontakion, and prayer text in HTML.

  • GET/v1/countries

    List of countries with Orthodox population data and continent.

  • GET/v1/countries/{slug}

    Country detail — Orthodoxy type, churches, FAQs, linked saints.

  • GET/v1/calendar/today

    Feast(s) for today — supports Gregorian or Julian via ?calendar=.

  • GET/v1/calendar/{date}

    Feast(s) for any YYYY-MM-DD date.

  • GET/v1/search

    Full-text search across saints and countries.

§ Quick start

From key to data in under a minute.

Pass your key as a bearer token. Every endpoint returns JSON with predictable shapes, CORS open, and CDN-cached where safe.

JavaScriptjavascript
const res = await fetch(
  "https://livesofthesaintscalendar.com/api/v1/saints?patronOf=travelers",
  { headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.LOTS_API_KEY}` } },
);
const { data } = await res.json();
console.log(data.map((s) => s.name));
Pythonpython
import os, httpx

r = httpx.get(
    "https://livesofthesaintscalendar.com/api/v1/calendar/today",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['LOTS_API_KEY']}"},
)
print(r.json())
Gogo
req, _ := http.NewRequest("GET",
    "https://livesofthesaintscalendar.com/api/v1/calendar/today", nil)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer " + os.Getenv("LOTS_API_KEY"))
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)
defer res.Body.Close()

More languages and reusable client snippets in SDKs & samples.

§ Build with us

What people are building.

  • Parish bulletins

    Pull the day's saint + troparion into your bulletin generator with a single call to /calendar/today.

  • Devotional apps

    Mobile and watch apps for a daily saint, with Gregorian or Julian calendar support out of the box.

  • Bots and webhooks

    Discord, Slack, and Telegram bots that announce the saint of the day or look up patron saints by topic.

  • Iconography catalogs

    Power image grids and search across saints by country, era, monastery, or saintly kind.

  • Smart displays + e-paper

    Low-power displays in homes, refectories, or narthex pulling a daily card via cron.

  • Academic research

    Bulk reads across saints and countries for digital humanities, linguistics, and demographic studies.

§ Why not just do it yourself?

Save the weeks of curation.

FeatureThis APIBuild your ownScraping
Editorial accuracyThree decades of vetted printYour time and energyWhatever Wikipedia says today
Gregorian + JulianBoth, mapped per saintBuild it yourselfInconsistent across sources
HymnographyTroparion, kontakion, prayerHand-typed from booksCopyright minefield
Iconography URLsStable CDN imagesSource + license each oneHotlink risk
Patron-saint searchTagged, queryableWeeks of curationNot structured
Time to first request30 secondsWeeksDays, then breakage
§ Pricing

Free to start. Honest when you grow.

Free

Free

  • 1,000 requests / month
  • 30 req / minute
  • All endpoints
  • Attribution required

Starter

most popular

$14/mo

  • 50,000 requests / month
  • 300 req / minute
  • All endpoints
  • Email support
  • Attribution optional

Pro

$49/mo

  • 500,000 requests / month
  • 1,200 req / minute
  • All endpoints
  • Email support
  • Priority routing
  • Attribution optional

Need higher volume, an SLA, or a custom license? Contact us for Enterprise.

§ Voices from the field

Loved by clergy, builders, and scholars.

“The Julian calendar support alone saved us a week. We launched our parish bulletin generator on a single afternoon.”
Fr. Demetrios K.
Greek Orthodox priest, Brooklyn
“I built a daily-saint smart display for my mother. The API was so clean I had a working prototype in 40 lines of Python.”
Maria S.
Software engineer
“We aggregated patron-saint data for a digital humanities project. Editorial quality is the best we've seen anywhere.”
Dr. Andrei P.
Researcher, Iași
§ Common questions
Where does the data come from?
Our editorial team, drawing on synaxaria and patristic sources, with thirty-plus years of Lives of the Saints calendars behind every entry.
Can I cache responses?
Yes. We set Cache-Control headers on every read endpoint. Aggressive caching is encouraged and helps your quota. Caching guide.
Julian or Gregorian?
Both. Calendar endpoints accept ?calendar=julian. We store and return both where editorial sources provide them.
What about attribution?
Free tier requires a visible “Powered by Lives of the Saints API” link. Paid tiers may remove it. Acceptable use.
Is the OpenAPI spec available?
Yes — OpenAPI 3.1 at /api/v1/openapi.json. Drop it into Postman, Insomnia, Scalar, or any code generator.
§ Start building

One key. Eight endpoints. Today's saint in your app.

Create a free key and make your first request before your coffee gets cold.

Get started
Resources
Conventions
Reference
Lives of the Saints API · v1
© 2026 Lives of the Saints