A free price transparency API for healthcare

Every US health insurer publishes machine-readable files of the rates it negotiated with providers. Arlo indexes them, together with Medicare's fee schedules and public CMS data about providers, and serves the result as a plain JSON API. No login, no key, no connector. Any agent or script that can make an HTTPS request can use it.

Base URL: https://api.arlohealth.ai/api/pricing.v1

What it answers

• What does this service cost near me under my plan? search returns nearby in-network options with estimated negotiated prices for one service, grouped by facility and sorted by best rate.
• Is this doctor or clinic in my network, and what do they charge? network-status checks a named provider or facility, benchmarks the contracted rate against the payer's typical rate, and shows which legal entity could bill.
• What does public data say about this provider? provider-evidence returns Medicare-derived procedure volume, facility outcome context, and what Medicare paid, by NPI.

Coverage

Supported insurers: Anthem, any Blue Cross Blue Shield plan through BlueCard, Blue Shield of California, UnitedHealthcare including UMR, Oxford, and Surest, Cigna, Aetna, HCSC, and Original Medicare. Medicare Advantage plans are declined with the reason: their rates are not published. The catalog covers about 170 common outpatient services chosen by CPT or HCPCS code, including office visits, imaging, labs, and procedures.

Endpoints

• GET /api/pricing.v1: index with links, limits, and the disclaimer
• GET /api/pricing.v1/openapi.json: OpenAPI 3.1 contract (also .yaml)
• GET /api/pricing.v1/guide.md: the agent guide, the source of truth for every field
• GET /api/pricing.v1/skill.md: a drop-in SKILL.md for agent platforms
• GET /api/pricing.v1/catalog: supported services
• GET /api/pricing.v1/payers: supported insurers and the names they accept
• POST or GET /api/pricing.v1/search: nearby in-network options with estimated prices
• POST or GET /api/pricing.v1/network-status: is a named provider in network, and what do they charge
• POST or GET /api/pricing.v1/provider-evidence: public-data evidence about one provider

Example

curl -s -H "User-Agent: my-agent/1.0" \
  "https://api.arlohealth.ai/api/pricing.v1/search?code=99213&zip=94607&limit=5&payerName=Anthem"

Send a descriptive User-Agent. Requests with a bare HTTP-library agent may be rejected at the edge.

Limits

Anonymous calls are rate limited per IP per minute: 60 for search, 20 for network-status, and 60 for provider-evidence. A 429 carries Retry-After. Discovery routes are cacheable for an hour. Every response carries a disclaimer: estimates are never guarantees. Responses derive from public regulatory data and contain no patient information. Use is subject to the Arlo Health terms.

The same data inside MCP

The search_care_prices, check_network_status, and get_provider_evidence tools on the Arlo Health MCP server call the same endpoints. With an Arlo account the plan comes from the patient's linked insurance records, so the agent does not have to ask which insurer they have.