Data Releases

HESTIA data are published in periodic versioned releases. Each release contains a fixed snapshot of all public data, recalculated using the current version of the HESTIA models and aggregated into national and global averages.

Release Contents

Each release includes:

• Underlying data: all public Cycles and Sites, with environmental impacts recalculated using the models at the time of the release.
• Aggregated data: national and global weighted averages for major food products, generated from the underlying Cycles in the release.

Releases are identified by a version number (e.g., v1.0, v1.1). The version number and release date are displayed in the Data Explorer.

Accessing Releases

The current public release is available to all users through the Data Explorer, API, and download functionality.

A release becomes public automatically 182 days after it is published — no request is needed. For example, v1.2 was published on 2026-04-30 and becomes publicly available on 2026-10-29.

Priority access to the latest version and a preview of the forthcoming release is available to contributors. Releases are made available to priority-access holders automatically as they are published, generally every six months. See Priority Data Access for details on how to qualify.

Which Release Are My Data From?

There are three ways to tell which release data comes from, depending on how it was obtained:

• Data Explorer: the release is chosen in the selector in the top bar, and the version number and release date are displayed alongside it.
• Data API: every request names the release it is asking about, in the X-Data-Version header. See Using the HESTIA Data API.
• Downloaded files: the updatedAt column records when each node was last updated. That date falls between the previous release date and the release the node belongs to — a node with an updatedAt between 2025-05-01 and 2026-03-10 is part of v1.1.

Changes Between Releases

Between releases, new data may be added to the platform and models may be updated. These changes are incorporated into the next release, and may include new models, updated emission factors, corrections to existing calculations, and changes to the geospatial datasets used for gap-filling. The public release remains fixed until a new version is published, ensuring reproducibility for users who cite a specific version in their research.

The releases page describes how the datasets differ between releases. It does not yet document the modelling, schema, and glossary changes that went into each one; a full changelog covering those is being prepared for future releases.

Reproducing a Result

Only a published release stays the same. Your own uploads and the preview are recalculated with whatever models and emission factors HESTIA uses that day, and the factors change every time the glossary does, without a new version. The same upload recalculated a week apart can therefore differ, and the difference cannot be traced to one change — only differences between two published releases can.

To make a result reproducible:

• Say which release you used, and request it by its date every time, with the X-Data-Version header or ?dataVersion=2026-03-10 (see Always Send a Release Date).
• Note when your own Cycles were recalculated. The engine version is recorded in addedVersion and updatedVersion, but the factors are not, so the date is the only record of them.
• Compare Cycles recalculated at the same time.

Changes are listed in the engine changelog and the glossary changelog.