The Best Free Public APIs of 2026
This isn't a hand-curated list with affiliate bias. Every API here earned its spot by scoring well on three measured dimensions: 30-day uptime (weighted 60%), response time from our hourly checks (30%), and how frictionless the free tier is (10%). We track 143 APIs across 14 categories, running automated health checks every hour. The picks below are the top 3 per category — the ones that are reliable, fast, and genuinely free right now. For the full ranked list in each category, click through to the category page. See our methodology for how scores are calculated.
Books
- #1 Free Dictionary API 🟢 Online No key
Dictionary definitions, phonetics, synonyms, and audio pronunciation for English words (plus 12 other languages). Community-run wrapper over Wiktionary data.
Unlimited (fair use), no key, no credit card
- #2 Datamuse 🟢 Online No key
Word-finding query engine: synonyms, rhymes, words that sound alike, and words related to a concept. Powers autocomplete, crossword helpers, and writing tools without a key.
No key, 100,000 requests/day, no credit card
- #3 Google Books API 🟢 Online No key
Search 40 million+ volumes by title, author, or ISBN, returning descriptions, page counts, categories, and cover thumbnails. Keyless for search, which made it the fallback after the Goodreads API closed in December 2020.
No key for search; per-IP quotas, 1,000/day with a free key
Cryptocurrency
- #1 Blockchain.com Data API 🟢 Online No key
Free Bitcoin blockchain data API from Blockchain.com providing prices, stats, blocks, and transaction data. No key required.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #2 Coinbase Advanced Trade API (Public) 🟢 Online No key
Public endpoints of Coinbase for market data including real-time prices, order books, and candles for all listed assets.
10 calls/sec, no key for public endpoints
- #3 CoinLore 🟢 Online No key
Free cryptocurrency data API with no key required, providing prices, market cap, and supply data for 10,000+ coins.
Unlimited (rate-limited), no key, no credit card
Dev-tools
- #1 Nager.Date 🟢 Online No key
Public holidays API for 100+ countries — holiday names, dates, and types, plus long-weekend calculation and 'is today a holiday' checks. Open source, no key.
Unlimited (fair use), no key, no credit card
- #2 JSONPlaceholder 🟢 Online No key
Fake REST API for testing and prototyping. Six resources (posts, comments, todos, users…) with full CRUD simulation. The default API in every frontend tutorial.
Unlimited (fair use), no key, no credit card
- #3 ipify 🟢 Online No key
The simplest public IP address API on the internet. One endpoint, returns your caller's public IP as text, JSON, or JSONP. Unlimited and free forever.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Entertainment
- #1 Rick and Morty API 🟢 Online No key
REST and GraphQL API for the Rick and Morty animated series, including all characters, locations, and episodes. Commonly used in React/GraphQL tutorials and hackathon projects.
10,000 req/day, no key, no credit card
- #2 TMDB (The Movie Database) 🟢 Online
The de-facto free movie and TV database. Covers 900,000+ titles with cast, crew, artwork, ratings, and translations in 39 languages. Became the default for hobby projects because IMDb never opened a public API — it only sells bulk datasets.
Free key, unlimited for non-commercial use; commercial needs a license
- #3 xkcd 🟢 Online No key
The webcomic's own JSON endpoint — comic number, title, alt text, and image URL. Tiny, stable, and unchanged for over a decade, which makes it the standard smoke-test API for tutorials.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Finance
- #1 Fixer.io 🟢 Online
Foreign exchange rate API with daily rates from ECB and 170+ currencies, widely used for financial apps.
100 calls/month, EUR base only, free key, no CC
- #2 Alpha Vantage 🟢 Online
Stock market, forex, and cryptocurrency data API with 20+ years of historical data and real-time quotes.
25 calls/day, free key, no credit card
- #3 Frankfurter 🟢 Online No key
Free currency exchange rates from the European Central Bank. No key required.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Food
- #1 Spoonacular 🟢 Online
Commercial-grade recipe, nutrition, and meal-planning API with ingredient substitution, wine pairing, and recipe parsing from a URL. The free tier is small but the data quality is well above the hobby databases.
Free key, 150 points/day (roughly 50 recipe searches)
- #2 TheMealDB 🟢 Online No key
Recipe database API — 300+ meals with ingredients, instructions, images, and category/area filters. The classic API for food app tutorials and hackathon projects.
Free test key for development; supporter key for production
- #3 TheCocktailDB 🟢 Online No key
Cocktail and drink recipe API — 600+ drinks with ingredients, measures, glass types, and images. Sister project of TheMealDB with the same access model.
Free test key for development; supporter key for production
Games
- #1 PokéAPI 🟢 Online No key
Comprehensive RESTful Pokémon data API covering all 1,000+ Pokémon, moves, abilities, types, and evolution chains. A go-to for learning REST API consumption and building fan projects.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #2 FreeToGame 🟢 Online No key
Catalog of free-to-play PC and browser games with genre, platform, and publisher filters plus thumbnails and store links. Useful for game-discovery and recommendation projects.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #3 Deck of Cards API 🟢 Online No key
Server-side playing-card deck: shuffle, draw, and manage piles with persistent deck IDs. Removes the need to model card state yourself when building a card game demo.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Geocoding
- #1 ip-api.com 🟢 Online No key
Free IP geolocation API returning country, city, region, ISP, and coordinates for any IP address. No key required.
45 calls/min (HTTP only), no key, no credit card
- #2 IPinfo 🔴 Offline No key
IP address data API providing geolocation, ASN, company, carrier, privacy detection, and abuse contact info.
50,000 calls/month, no key (token extends limits)
- #3 ipstack 🟢 Online
IP geolocation API by APILayer — location, timezone, currency, and connection data for any IPv4/IPv6 address. One of the most recognized names in IP lookup.
100 requests/month, email signup, no credit card (HTTP only on free)
Mcp
- #1 Cloudflare Docs MCP 🟢 Online No key
Cloudflare's official docs MCP server — query Workers, D1, R2, KV, and Pages documentation with citations. No key required.
Unlimited (fair use), no key, no credit card
- #2 Microsoft Learn MCP 🟢 Online No key
Official Microsoft MCP server — search and retrieve Microsoft/Azure documentation as grounded context for AI agents. No key, no signup.
Unlimited (fair use), no key, no credit card
- #3 Astro Docs MCP 🟢 Online No key
The Astro framework's official documentation MCP server — grounded answers about Astro APIs, integrations, and configuration. No key.
Unlimited (fair use), no key, no credit card
Music
- #1 Deezer API 🟢 Online No key
Public catalog data for artists, albums, tracks, and charts, with 30-second previews. The public read endpoints need no key, which is why it survived as a Spotify alternative after Spotify restricted audio-features for new apps in late 2024.
No key for public catalog data; OAuth only for user data
- #2 iTunes Search API 🟢 Online No key
Apple's public catalog search covering music, podcasts, films, and apps, with artwork URLs and 30-second preview streams. No key, no signup — but Apple blocks datacenter IP ranges, so it must be called from a residential or mobile client rather than a cloud function.
No key, approximately 20 calls/minute, no credit card
- #3 MusicBrainz 🟢 Online No key
The open music encyclopedia — artists, releases, recordings, and relationships, maintained by the MetaBrainz Foundation. The canonical free replacement for the discontinued Echo Nest and the shrinking Spotify metadata endpoints.
No key, 1 request/second, requires an identifying User-Agent
News
- #1 Wikipedia REST API 🟢 Online No key
Official Wikipedia API for retrieving article summaries, full text, featured content, and on-this-day events.
Unlimited, no key, must set User-Agent
- #2 Lobste.rs API 🟢 Online No key
Simple JSON API for the Lobste.rs technology-focused news aggregator, providing stories, comments, and user data.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #3 Hacker News API 🟢 Online No key
Official Firebase-based Hacker News API providing real-time access to stories, comments, jobs, and user data.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Public-data
- #1 USGS Earthquake Catalog 🟢 Online No key
Official United States Geological Survey feed of global seismic events as GeoJSON, updated within minutes of detection, with magnitude, depth, and precise coordinates. Government-funded, so there is no monetisation pressure on the free tier.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #2 Zippopotam.us 🟢 Online No key
Postal-code lookup across 60+ countries returning place name, state, latitude, and longitude. The lightest way to turn a ZIP into coordinates without a geocoding key.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #3 Sunrise Sunset API 🟢 Online No key
Sunrise, sunset, solar noon, and twilight times for any coordinates and date. Single-purpose and dependable — the standard companion to a weather integration.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
Sports
- #1 TheSportsDB 🟢 Online No key
Crowd-sourced sports database covering teams, players, fixtures, and results across football, basketball, motorsport, and more, with team badges and stadium imagery.
Free test key for development; Patreon key required for production
- #2 balldontlie (NBA) 🟢 Online
NBA teams, players, games, and box-score stats going back to 1946. Ran fully open for years before adding mandatory free accounts in 2024 — still the most usable basketball API given stats.nba.com blocks datacenter IPs.
Free account key, 5 requests/minute; higher tiers paid
- #3 football-data.org 🟢 Online
European football fixtures, standings, scorers, and results for the major competitions, maintained as an independent project. The most reliable free option since ESPN closed its public API.
Free tier: 12 competitions, 10 calls/minute, free key
Weather
- #1 Open-Meteo Air Quality 🟢 Online No key
Free air quality forecast API providing PM2.5, PM10, ozone, and other pollutant data worldwide. No key required.
10,000 calls/day, no key, no credit card
- #2 7Timer! 🟢 Online No key
Free, no-key weather forecast API focused on astronomical and civil forecasts using NOAA GFS model data.
Unlimited, no key, no credit card
- #3 Open-Meteo 🟢 Online No key
Free weather forecast API with no key required. 10,000 calls/day for non-commercial use.
10,000 calls/day, no key, no credit card
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes an API the 'best' free API?
We define 'best' by three measurable factors: reliability (uptime over 30 days), speed (response time from our hourly checks), and free-tier accessibility (how much friction is between you and the first successful call). These are weighted 60/30/10 in our composite score. An API that's almost never down and responds quickly beats a feature-rich API that's slow and unreliable, even if the latter has a more impressive marketing page. All data is from our own automated checks — no self-reported uptime, no sponsored rankings.
Are these APIs all production-safe for 2026?
The ones with high composite scores and stable uptime histories are used in production by many developers. That said, 'production-safe' depends on your requirements. For a side project handling hundreds of calls/day, Open-Meteo or Frankfurter are genuinely reliable enough. For a business application handling millions of calls/month, you should evaluate each API's SLA, support options, and paid tiers as a fallback. None of the free tiers on this list come with a formal SLA — that's what paid plans are for. We link to paid alternatives on each API's detail page.
How often does this list change?
The underlying data (uptime, response times) updates every hour. The page itself is rebuilt periodically, so the composite scores and rankings reflect recent monitoring data. New APIs get added to our tracking when they launch or when the community requests them. APIs that go down permanently or move behind a paywall are moved to the Graveyard section. The list for 2026 reflects the APIs that are available and performing well right now, not a static snapshot from the beginning of the year.
Are free APIs safe to use if I don't read the terms?
Skipping the terms is a real risk. Even genuinely free APIs have usage restrictions that matter for commercial projects: Open-Meteo prohibits commercial use on the free tier; Nominatim requires attribution; some news APIs restrict you from storing or reselling the data. For personal projects and prototyping, these restrictions rarely matter. For anything shipping to real users or generating revenue, spend 10 minutes reading the terms of service — it's much cheaper than retrofitting a paid plan after you've built on a free tier that doesn't permit your use case.