Government & open data
CBS StatLine
StatLine is the public database of Statistics Netherlands (CBS). It holds several thousand statistical tables covering population, labour and income, business, healthcare, education, safety, housing and the environment, broken down by region, sector and period among others. All tables are also available as open data through CBS's OData web services, so a figure can be retrieved without clicking through the table builder by hand. It is the default source whenever a case file, policy document or report needs a verifiable Dutch statistic.
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What this source does not give you
StatLine delivers figures, not document text: it contains no reports, policy papers or legal sources, only tables of numbers and the accompanying notes on methodology. Figures are also revised — provisional figures later become definitive, tables are discontinued and replaced by a successor with a different breakdown — so a number without a table identifier and reference date is not reproducible.
Frequently asked questions
- Can I use StatLine to support a legal position?
- For factual support yes, for legal support no. StatLine tells you how many single-person households a municipality has, how wages developed in a sector, or how many businesses are active in an industry. That is usable in a damages calculation, a market definition, a policy justification or an administrative report. The norm itself — the statutory text, the ruling, the decision — comes from elsewhere. Anyone citing StatLine as a legal source is confusing fact with law.
- How do I get figures out of StatLine without manual work?
- CBS offers three web services for StatLine following the OData protocol: a catalogue service listing every available table, a data service for direct queries, and a feed for downloading larger datasets without a record limit. The direct API has a maximum number of cells per request, so large breakdowns have to be fetched through the feed or in parts. Quick-start guides are available for R, Python and Excel.
- What does it mean when a table is marked provisional or revised?
- CBS publishes many series first as provisional figures and revises them later on the basis of more complete source data; further provisional and definitive figures follow in subsequent releases. Tables are also discontinued when a classification changes — for instance when industry codes are revised — and replaced by a successor table that is not always directly comparable with the old one. So record the table identifier, the period and the retrieval date for every figure you take over.
- Does StatLine contain personal data or data on individual businesses?
- No. StatLine publishes aggregated statistics only. CBS is legally required to prevent disclosure of data on identifiable individuals or businesses, and suppresses cells too small to publish safely; these appear as a dot or a missing value. Research at microdata level runs through a separate, conditional route at CBS — not through StatLine.