5 Free API’s you can use Have you ever been stuck thinking about a project idea but just couldn’t get it off the ground? As a programmer, using external sources is a GREAT way to speed up development of something you want build. Here are 5 Free API’s you can use to help you kickstart an awesome project with ANY programming language of your choice… as long as it can make an HTTP request….
which is like every programming language I think. Some of these API’s I mention have “free tiers” and would require some sort of payment after a large use, but that’s a good problem to have if people are actually using your app. The purpose of these API’s varies but I wanted to focus it on inspiring you to build an app.
I will provide some ideas you can do with these or maybe you will come up with one on your own. Alright let’s go. 1 IGDB Video Games is something I have a soft spot in my heart for.
If you’re an epic gamer like me check out IGDB’s free api. While researching this video, I actually realized that IGDB was acquired by Twitch, which (Twitch which) is a pretty cool fit. Now because of this, you do require a Twitch account and 2FA enabled in order to access the API, but what is great with it is that it’s by far the most robust Gaming database there is.
It allows you to build competing products, SSL support and access it’s huge catalogue of over 200,000 unique games. Awesome. Crowd sourced internet databases is something I am a huge fan of.
I stay up way too late on wikipedia. So, that’s why I am tired for all of you in the comments asking…. There is a huge amount of endpoints to look at like, games, companies, platforms, genres, artwork, characters and much more.
It’s honestly just a very thorough database of video games. Here are some fun ideas that you can work on with this API: • Create a game like Wordle where it shows a pixelated version of an artwork and have the user guess what the artwork is and make it less blurry the amount of wrong guesses they make. You could go viral with that idea.
• Create a games catalogue website where users can flex their epic gamer vibez by having there games on a shelf that people can view with a link. Scott the Woz style. • Include the IGDB in an existing forum you are part of and whenever a game is referenced, it can give some brief context to those silly non gamers who can’t get gud.
There are a ton of endpoints you can use to your advantage so get creative and think of something you can do with it. I used a DOTA 2 api when I was in college to make an app that chose what character you should play. Fun times.
For JavaScript, Java and Python users there are some official wrappers you can use so that you don’t have to use a requests library and for PHP/GO/Ruby and C# users, there are third party libraries. Otherwise, you can just access through HTTP. One thing I would advise is to maybe cache some of the results as the rate limits are a little low.
Only 4 requests per second. So if your app requires it your users to grab a very up to date entry, you might need to get creative… but again, these are GOOD problems to have. Get cracking gamers.
1 Words API How much data can you get off of 1 word? The answer is shockingly a lot. If your application has some sort of language feature, maybe give the Words API a try.
The words API is an http API that will give you a ton of information on a word that you provide it with. If I enter the word “dog” I can get: • Definitions • Synonyms • Antonyms • Examples • Rhymes • Frequency • Regions • Categories • Entails • Has attribute…. Like I said, an insane amount of data.
I just thought of an awesome project idea. • Make an educational app where it has a nice clean user interface like a dictionary where it shows the word in big bold letters and then have all the information underneath in a nice pretty way. • Make a game like Wordle (this might be a theme), where a robot voice says the word and then you have to guess the spelling of the word.
You can even make it like a spelling bee and have clues where it says: “can I use that in a sentence” etc. • Make a little chrome extension where when you right click on something it provides a synonym for the word that is highlighted. The real value comes from the information that is assigned with the Words versus the words itself.
If you are interested in just the words, I made a video on an awesome open source project that is just a list of words which you can find below. The free tier is hosted through RapidAPI and has 2500 free requests per day which if you are making a game above, should be plenty to have fun with. Bookworms will love this!
Next API! 1 Quotes API So this is going to contain a couple of API’s because of it’s broad subject but for #3 I have chosen a quotes API. You will have lots of interests in your life so this will mostly apply to your interests, whether that is stoicism, inspiration, programming, Kanye West, etc.
I will link some below, but for now I am going to focus on the Inspiring and Motivational quotes API. These API’s are EXTREMELY simple because for the most part, you will just get a small amount of data in each request. Like the quote and the author of that quote.
Some like the ZenQuote’s will also provide a character count and an HTML string you can also render to the screen… but that’s a little scary to do. If you don’t want to use an API, you could probably download a big dataset of quotes and then quickly find a way to put them in a database and serve it through a REST api but of course that’s some more friction to getting your app done faster. Here are some cool project ideas.
• I mentioned this in my Cool Project Ideas video I did a while back but use a random quote generator API of your choice and mix it with an image creation library to make a cool inspiration image generator. Programatically post that on Twitter and Reddit and just farm that sweet sweet clout. • Make a game where you use the kanye.
rest API (what an incredible name) and have the user decide if this quote is something that Kanye said or not. You can even make it really tricky by generating a bunch of fake quotes that Kanye might have said using the OpenAI API. • Use the stoic quote api to make yourself look like you are emotionally stable on Twitter.
Bonus points if you have a picture of a greek statue. This one is awesome too because they host a version of this API but also has instructions on how you can run this on a serverless function. Self-hosted for the win.
Most API’s are completely free, open sourced or have a free tier so look accordingly to what your needs are. There are many things you can do with quotes like games, tweets or just for your own enjoyment. The ones I mentioned above are listed below, but you can find so many fun ways to implement this into your apps.
1 Market Data API If you LOVE finance and think numbers going up and down is a fun personality trait, you should give the Market Data API from Alpaca a try. Alpaca looks like a mix of Stripe (a payment processor for developers) and Robinhood (an easy way to trade zero commission stocks). The point of this API is to look at Market Data and to see realtime or historical data on a given stock that you provide.
They provide a free tier where you can get a more limited amount of data and are rate limited at 200 calls per second. For small projects this is great. They have a SDK for Python, GO, Node and C# and also have the WebSocket protocol available so that you can get real time updates without polling the server.
Here are some interesting ideas. • Connect a news API and read the sentiment of the news article to see if the negative or positive sentiment make the price go up or down. • Make a graph of the all time performance of a stock and put it through an image generation software to make a cool poster.
Well… cool being subjective if that’s the type of stuff you like hanging up. • Since we are gamifying everything. Make a game of a stock ticker and have a multiple choice at the bottom asking which stock it is.
I’m sure that will go viral in some niche communities. Being able to include some sort of real time implementation within your app is a really cool feature and if you have some cool idea. I think this would really be a neat API to use in your next app.
1 ILovePDF PDF’s are a very strange concept to me. Why? Well, PDF’s are both an awesome format because of how many pieces of software support them, and they are horrible for how annoying they are to deal with.
Apart from a webpage, PDF is almost a universally accepted file format across any sort of device… which is why every receipt, invoice, documentation… anything is stored in PDF format. ILovePDF loves PDF’s so you don’t have to… I just made that up… I should see if they want to trademark that. If you work at an office job, then I don’t need to explain how annoying all of this is.
What’s cool with ILovePDF is that it provides tools like: • Merging 2 or more PDF files into a single PDF • Splitting pages into multiple files • extracting the text • repairing pdfs • encrypting pdfs • removing the password and much more. Here are some project ideas: • Whenever your email chain is done, have a feature where it automatically goes to the api and generates a PDF of the entire conversation for archiving purposes. • If you are building a client website or require text from a PDF document that was sent to you, use the API to get the text so you don’t have to manually copy and paste it.
• Have you ever received an image in a PDF that was supposed to go in a website? Use this to do the dirty work for you instead of trying to tell your client to send it directly in the email. You can almost use this API strictly as a way to avoid any user errors with PDF’s.
It’s honestly great. You do require an account with I Love PDF and they will give you 250 free files per month but does get pricy afterwards so make sure you monitor the amount of PDF’s you are generating. There are libraries for .
NET, PHP, Ruby and Node. The API is great but does require a quick read of the documentation as they have a different approach to how you upload, process and download the files. ILovePDF makes your PDF problems go away (seriously… I am on a role with these).
Outro Make sure you like comment and subscribe. Let me know if you want to see more Public API’s. Thanks for watching coders.
see you next time.
