> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.near.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# NEAR Lake Indexer

> Learn how NEAR Lake indexes the network

<Danger>
  **Deprecated: NEAR Lake is no longer maintained**

  As of **March 24, 2026**, NEAR Lake (AWS S3 buckets) has stopped indexing new blocks and is no longer maintained by Aurora. Existing data remains accessible for historical use, but no new blocks will be written.

  Recommended alternatives:

  * **[Neardata](https://neardata.xyz)** — direct drop-in replacement for NEAR Lake
  * **[Data APIs](/data-infrastructure/data-api)** — community APIs from [NearBlocks](https://nearblocks.io), [Pikespeak](https://pikespeak.ai), and [FastNear](https://fastnear.com)
  * **[Goldsky](https://goldsky.com)** — managed indexer service
  * **[Nearcore Indexer](/data-infrastructure/near-indexer)** — run your own indexer node
</Danger>

NEAR Lake is an indexer built on top of [NEAR Indexer Framework](https://github.com/near/nearcore/tree/master/chain/indexer) to watch the network and store all the event logs such as [FT Events](https://github.com/near/NEPs/tree/master/neps/nep-0300.md) and [NFT Events](https://github.com/near/NEPs/tree/master/neps/nep-0256.md) as JSON files on AWS S3.

<Info>
  **GitHub repo**

  You can find the Lake Indexer source code in [this GitHub repository](https://github.com/aurora-is-near/near-lake-indexer).
</Info>

### Data structure

The data structure used by Lake Indexer is the following:

```text theme={"theme":{"light":"github-light","dark":"github-dark"}}
    <block_height>/
      block.json
      shard_0.json
      shard_1.json
      ...
      shard_N.json
```

`<block_height>` is a 12-character-long [`u64`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/primitive.u64.html) string with leading zeros (e.g "000042839521"). See [this issue for reasoning](https://github.com/near/near-lake/issues/23).

`block_json` contains JSON-serialized `BlockView` struct. **NB!** this struct might change in the future, we will announce it

`shard_N.json` where N is [`u64`](https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/primitive.u64.html) starting from `0`. Represents the index number of the shard. In order to find out the expected number of shards in the block you can look in `block.json` at `.header.chunks_included`

### How to use it

We have created the [NEAR Lake Framework](https://github.com/near/near-lake-framework-rs) to have a simple straightforward way to create an indexer on top of the data stored by NEAR Lake itself.

<Info>
  **NEAR Lake Framework**

  You can check the NEAR Lake Framework release announcement on the [NEAR Governance Forum](https://gov.near.org/t/announcement-near-lake-framework-brand-new-word-in-indexer-building-approach/17668).
</Info>

We have prepared this video tutorial with a simple example to give you an overview and some practical ideas.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GsF7I93K-EQ" title="NEAR Lake Indexer" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen />