Free Public JSON APIs for Developers: No API Key Required

The quickest way to learn how to work with JSON is to fetch it from a real API. These eight free endpoints require no API key, no account, and no credit card — just a fetch() call and you're returning JSON data immediately.

What makes a good practice API?

A good learning or prototyping API should have three properties: no authentication (so you can call it from a browser or script without setup), CORS headers enabled (so client-side JavaScript can access it directly), and stable data (so your code keeps working a week later). Every API on this list meets all three criteria.

The APIs

Fetching JSON from any of these APIs

The pattern is identical for every endpoint — check response.ok before calling .json(), and wrap the whole thing in a try/catch:

async function fetchJson(url) {
  const response = await fetch(url);

  if (!response.ok) {
    throw new Error(`HTTP ${response.status}`);
  }

  return response.json();
}

// Example: fetch a random user
const user = await fetchJson('https://randomuser.me/api/');
console.log(user.results[0].name.first);

// Example: get Germany's country data
const [country] = await fetchJson(
  'https://restcountries.com/v3.1/name/germany'
);
console.log(country.capital[0]); // "Berlin"

Working with the returned JSON

Once you have the JSON string (or the parsed object from response.json()), you can explore it using the formatter below before writing any code. Paste the raw response in to see its structure, validate it, and find the exact key paths you need.

Need more APIs?

The community-maintained public-apis repository lists hundreds of categorised APIs across finance, music, games, science, and more — searchable by auth method and CORS support.