Frequently asked questions

A directory of 2,712 free and public APIs that we check ourselves rather than copying from someone else's list. Every entry records whether it needs a key, whether it supports CORS, whether it runs over HTTPS, and whether it actually responded when we last called it.

Every API listed has a free tier of some kind, and 1,051 need no key at all. "Free" still varies: some are free for any use, some only for non-commercial use, and some are free up to a request limit. We record what we can verify and link to the provider's own terms for the rest.

An automated job calls every listing on a schedule, trying HEAD first and falling back to GET, with a timeout and an identifying User-Agent. It records the status code, the response time and whether CORS headers came back. At the last full run, 487 of 2,712 entries were not responding.

That we sent a request with no key, no token and no Authorization header, and got a successful response. It is a tested claim, not a repeated one. It does not mean unlimited use — most keyless APIs still rate-limit by IP address.

CORS decides whether browser JavaScript on your site is allowed to read a response from another domain. Without it, a request that works perfectly in curl will fail in a web page. It is the single most common reason a free API turns out to be unusable for a frontend project, which is why we test for it.

Our status badges come from scheduled checks, so a change usually appears within a day. If something is wrong before we catch it, tell us through the contact page and we will correct the entry.

Yes. Use the submit page. We check anything submitted the same way we check everything else, so a listing only appears once it has actually responded to us.

Entries are aggregated from public sources including public-apis, public-api-lists and freepublicapis, then normalised and independently verified by our own checks. The health, latency and CORS data is entirely our own.

The site carries advertising to cover hosting and the cost of running the checks. Ads never influence which APIs are listed, how they are ranked, or what the status badges say, and our editorial policy sets out where that line sits.

The listings are aggregated from public sources under their own licences. Our measurements — status, latency, reliability and CORS results — are ours, and you are welcome to cite them with a link back. Get in touch if you want something more systematic.