More Than 35+ Free APIs for Your Next Programming Project

Here are numerous free APIs that you can use in your next programming project.

High-Quality Media APIs

Unsplash API The Unsplash API lets you get free stock photos that are actually high quality. This way you can write code that will let you query images for your blog post or a relevant image in the group chat.

YouTube API If you want to experiment with your own online content, then the YouTube API is pretty good for changing thumbnails, titles, etc. You could do some A/B testing on some thumbnails to see which one gets the best click-through rate or implement dynamic titles.

The Movie DB API The classic modern-day predicament is figuring out which streaming service has a specific show. An API that acts as a search engine based on the movies you give it is great for building your own project on what to watch. The pricing is often generous, with around 1000 requests per month being good enough for a simple application.

The Waifu API The Waifu API lets you build your anime waifu for free. A favorite endpoint is waifu, so if you need a simple request to look like you actually program, you can put it through there and you're good to go.

Internet Game Database (IGDB) API For gamers, the Internet Game Database has a free API that you can use, and it's owned by Twitch. It allows for a really intense search for game versions, genres, covers, images, and more. Many have used the IGDB to create cool applications, so since it's free, why not?

trace.moe API The trace.moe API can retrieve an anime series based on a single frame that you provide. With a 1000-request monthly quota and being fully open-source, it's seriously impressive.

Community & Communication APIs

Discord API The Discord API lets you build custom bots that you can use in your channels to get them to play games or whatever. It's a great way to engage your community. Midjourney does it, and there are SDKs for like every single programming language.

Data & Information APIs

World News API If you want to get up-to-date world news for your application, then the World News API has a free tier. It does have its limits, though, with 50 points per day before calls are cut off. Prices for higher tiers are quite expensive, so make sure you're making money before using this heavily.

Random Data Generator API If you're testing an app, then you'll probably need a good mix of fake data. The Random Data Generator doesn't require an API key and it lets you generate a ton of different models. It's probably just using faker.js under the hood, but if you want to use that, then here you go.

Foreign Exchange Rates API Foreign exchange rates are annoying, but with this API, you don't even need an authentication key. If you get the free one, then you'll also get historical data with it, so it's pretty worth it. In any sort of payment context within your app, you're going to have to deal with foreign exchange rates, so this one is free and fair. Awesome.

HTTP Status Dogs API Status codes are boring, but HTTP Status Dogs are not. This is a really fun one for a 403 Forbidden response. You can just call it by referencing the status code, and there you have it.

Geoapify API Geoapify is the face of geocoding places. When you enter an address with text, how do you translate that into Google Maps or whatever map software you use? While Google Maps can cost a big dollar, Geoapify has 2500 free API requests daily, which is a lot for a small app, especially if you're testing.

Free Dictionary API This API is called the Free Dictionary API, and I'll give you one guess what it does. This doesn't require an API key either and is actually run off of donations, so props to them. You could probably use this to build a really simple app, or if you highlight a word, it will tell you what it means without getting roasted in your group chat.

OpenWeather API OpenWeather is a go-to API with 1000 API calls for free per day and is very reliable. Who actually needs weather data? I don't know, but it could be a cool way to connect AI to determine what to wear or something. So, use it at your discretion.

Open Food Facts API Open Food Facts is awesome because you enter the barcode number and it'll give you all of the information on that specific item. You could build an app that completely remakes a whole lot from scratch and saves it into a database with a score. It's pretty awesome.

NASA APIs NASA has a ton of APIs, and they're all awesome. Where do I even begin? There are APIs for astronomy pictures, Mars weather, and observation data. There's so much to explore here. You don't need an API key, but it is recommended, and this data is some of the only data you can get regarding space. Maybe for video games or something.

Open Sky Network API The Open Sky Network lets you track planes in real-time. For open data, it's available in Python and Java or just by using the REST API.

Developer Tools & Utilities

Pantry API If you have a simple application that needs a database, don't set up a database. Pantry lets you store 100 megabytes of JSON while attaching a CRUD interface to it, kind of like TinyDB for Python if you've ever used it.

Clearbit Logo API This one is super niche, but Clearbit lets you get company logos if that's something you need. So if you make an HTTP request, you can even get the logo for Twitter.

Svix API Svix is a webhooks-as-a-service API. So when your app does something and you want to send some data to another app or somewhere else, this is a great way to do it. You have to sign up, but it is free and has SDKs for like every language, so it's pretty awesome.

Kroki API Kroki lets you put in text and then it outputs as a diagram, either in a JPEG or PNG format. A database diagram, for example, is handy, but they have a ton of complex ones you can use for a blog post or integration within your site.

Google Docs API Yes, you can connect to Google Docs with an API. Some examples are using the data from your docs as JSON, creating an add-on for the side of Google Docs, and connecting to other services. Google Docs, who knew?

iLovePDF API The iLovePDF API makes it easy to extract text, edit PDFs, remove passwords, compress, and way more. They have libraries in Ruby, Node, and PHP, but REST is usually just good enough.

CloudConvert API I tried so hard to find an API that could convert files easily, and this is one of the best I found. CloudConvert will get it done. If this is a functionality in your app, then this is definitely the cheapest option. But if it's only between two specific file types, just automate it with Python or something.

Resend API Resend makes sending emails extremely easy. It seems silly, but you should have seen the things I did to get email to work in my applications. It offers simple integration in your code for any language, as well as the ability to create email using React. I know this seems silly, but email still uses HTML tables, folks.

DigiDates API DigiDates helps you deal with dates, like validating if a date exists, if it's a leap year, etc. If you have a project that needs one tiny little date-related function, dependencies like Arrow for Python or Moment.js for JavaScript are such overkill. So one API endpoint might be perfect for you.

AI & Machine Learning APIs

Ollama API Okay, this one is kind of unique. Ollama lets you run large language models on your machine, but it comes with an API that you can listen to through a local host. Llama, Mistral, or LLaVA are all available. So if you're building privacy-centric apps but want AI, this is awesome and free.

Deepgram API Deepgram is a speech-to-text API that is kind of like OpenAI's Whisper. What's really cool about this tool is that you can add timestamps for each word, summarize audio, and perform sentiment analysis. You do have to sign up for an account and get a key, obviously, but there's no credit card required and you get 200 credits. Not bad at all.

Finance & Trading APIs

Alpha Vantage API If you want to build a trading bot, this is a great API to use for a lot of the core functions. The technical terms like P/E ratio and whatever are all there with historical data. You get 25 requests per day, which is okay. They even have data on wheat, corn, and cotton.

yfinance Yahoo Finance is a popular source for financial data. While there isn't an official API, the yfinance package in Python works reliably most of the time to get historical data on stocks. It honestly seems like a nightmare to maintain this, so props to the maintainer.

Stripe API The Stripe API is revolutionary. I don't really need to tell you much about it. It's really easy to get started with and accept payments. If you wanted to build a store or some financial automations, whatever. I mean, it's not free—2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. If you want free, you could probably use crypto, but you might lose money there.

Alpaca API Alpaca is the most popular way to create automated stock trading bots. Its API is really well-documented and very popular. It has a ton of different SDKs you can use across different programming languages. You just need money to run it, which isn't free, but the API access is.

Content & Platform APIs

Deck of Cards API The Deck of Cards API is honestly kind of hilarious because it's not that complex of a topic, really. If you're wanting to make a game or a user interface involving cards, this is perfect. It has a lot of different endpoints to do different actions and is honestly pretty damn cute. An endpoint where you draw two cards is just so perfect. Then there are piles, shuffling decks, shuffling piles, and listing cards in piles. Okay, sorry, maybe it's a bit complex.

WordPress REST API WordPress has a REST API attached to it that you can query. So if you want to start a website for a client or yourself but also want to do that fancy TypeScript, React, Astro stuff, this is a great way of doing that. Honestly, without the plugins, WordPress is pretty great.

Spotify API Spotify has a really popular API that you can use to retrieve artists, songs, and the pennies that they pay artists every year. If you created a serverless function that grabbed your latest listened-to song every 30 minutes, then it'd be a cool little feature on your website.

Podcast Index API Podcast Index lets you grab information on podcasts. However, the part I care about the most is the transcript. It gives you the URL you can download and just have a lot of fun with, as it's even timed. So you can do some fun things with AI or maybe do those annoying articles with the one-word-at-a-time thing.

ZenQuotes API ZenQuotes is an API you've probably used in your tutorials with the weather API. You don't need a key, and honestly, it's a great way to maybe try out a new programming language or a silly Easter egg in your Discord bot or something. Beyond simple: call the API, get the quote. There are lots of different things you can do with it.

Your Favorite App's API I'm throwing all of these APIs into one number on this list, and that is your favorite app. Most of the time, software like Notion, Obsidian, Jira, and for me, Todoist, have an API you can plug into. The reason I'm batching this into one is because it's usually based on the data you provide, and if that software isn't free, then the API usually isn't free.