When you are learning Frontend development using ReactJS, NextJS, JavaScript, etc., or any other library, or framework, you know that you need to learn how you can use APIs to fetch data from the backend and use them to build your frontend. That is the most basic requirement of the current Web development landscape.
Generally, most beginners go with the Weather API to get the weather data, but there are so many more free 3rd party APIs that you can use to create interesting projects for yourself while you are learning web development.
Even a beginner understands the importance of understanding how to use APIs. Before moving on to the list of FREE public APIs that you can use without any key or even registration, let's understand what a basic API is and why you need it.
What is API?
API or REST API stands for Application Programming Interface or Representable State Transfer (REST) Application Programming Interface, is a set of methods or functions that are available over HTTP (or web) and can be used to interact with the backend or the database to perform different operations.
For example, if you have a simple application to store TODO list, then if you want to build a frontend and backend for this, the backend can have several APIs to create, update, delete, and mark done, for TODO items. Now these APIs will be nothing but functions to perform these operations, but they will be accessible over HTTP, which means that they will have a URL, and anyone who knows that URL, can use that function, by providing the required arguments or request parameters.
Why FREE APIs?
FREE APIs can help you test your website with some dummy data before you actually start using actual user data or your website data. So it's always good to have a set of FREE APIs at your disposal that you can use whenever you want to test some piece of code that deals with API call and handling of the response data.
FREE Public APIs to use without Key or Authentication
In this article, I will share with you some amazing, very simple-to-use APIs, that are absolutely FREE, but that doesn't mean that you misuse these APIs, please use them sincerely - just for testing your code, and for learning purposes.
Generally, the FREE APIs will ask you to register and generate a key before you can hit it to get the data, but the APIs that I have listed here will not ask for a key. Yes, you can directly use it.
Get a new cat fact on every request.
Sample URL: https://catfact.ninja/fact
When you hit this API, you get suggestions for random interesting activities to fight your boredom. You can use this API to build a simple app to suggest new activities in different categories to users.
Sample URL: https://www.boredapi.com/api/activity
You can use this FREE public API to guess age based on a person's name.
Sample URL: https://api.agify.io?name=abhishek
Using this FREE public API you can guess the gender of a person based on the name with a probability score too.
Sample URL: https://api.genderize.io?name=abhishek
Generate random dog images for your App.
Sample URL: https://dog.ceo/api/breeds/image/random
Using this FREE public API you can generate random jokes for a given category like programming jokes, or couple jokes, etc.
Sample URL: https://official-joke-api.appspot.com/random_joke
If you want to generate random user data with a name, a profile image, gender, email address, etc. then you can use this API.
Sample URL: https://randomuser.me/api/
If you are a Pokemon fan, then you can use this API to get information about different Pokemon.
Sample URL: https://pokeapi.co/api/v2/pokemon/ditto
You can use this FREE public API to generate simple facts around different numbers.
Sample URL: http://numbersapi.com/37
10. CoinDesk API
You can use this API to get the Bitcoin price index in real-time.
Sample URL: https://api.coindesk.com/v1/bpi/currentprice.json
You can use this API to predict the nationality of a person by their name.
Sample URL: https://api.nationalize.io?name=abhishek
This FREE public API can be used to get USA population-related data.
Sample URL: https://datausa.io/api/data?drilldowns=Nation&measures=Population
More Public APIs
If you are OK with using a key to use any API, then you should definitely explore Rapidapi.com, where you can find thousands of FREE APIs. All you gotta do is register on the RapidAPI platform > generate your API Key > and start using the FREE APIs.
You should also check out this extensive list of FREE APIs available in Github: https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis
We hope this list of FREE public APIs (no Key required) helps you in your Frontend learning journey.
