Apertif is a phased-array feed system for the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), providing forty instantaneous beams over 300 MHz of bandwidth. This first data release includes observations in the first year of survey operations, from 1 July 2019 through 30 June 2020. The data release includes all raw observational data for a total of 221 observations of 160 independent target fields, covering approximately one thousand square degrees of sky. A subset of processed data products, meeting specified quality assessment criteria as outlined in Adams et al. (2022), are also released. Images and cubes are released on a per beam basis, and 3374 beams (of 7640 considered) are included in this data release. The processed data products are only available for the upper 150 MHz of the band over the range 1280–1430 MHz. The first 12.5 MHz of data are flagged due to persistent RFI resulting in a nominal bandwidth of 137.5 MHz and central frequency of 1361.25 MHz. The data products are not primary-beam corrected, however the primary-beam images are provided separately that may be used for mosaicking or for correction of individual images. The raw visibility data are provided as separate collections for the survey fields, flux calibrator and polarization calibrator observations. The tables can be joined to identify the associated calibrators for a target observation. This service queries the raw visibilities for the polarization calibrator. These are stored on tape and are not immediately available for download. The data release documentation should be consulted for up-to-date information on how to access the data.