To put it simply: a web API (application programming interface) is a tool which tells a particular system what you want and gives the response back to you. Think of an API as a messenger. As you can imagine, APIs are extremely useful when creating a project. I've curated a list of 10 fun APIs to use for your next project. Let's dive right into it!
1. Exchange Rate API
Exchange Rate API is a free currency conversion tool with over 160 currencies. Some of its pros include: easy to use, global exchange rates, ultra-fast, and accurate conversions.
Project Idea:
Create a website which allows a user to put in a currency and value and have it convert to another currency of a user's choice.
2. DEV API
This is one of my personal favourites. This API is extremely powerful. You can get published articles, post articles, get comments, see users followers, see a user's tags that they follow, and much more.
Project Idea:
Create a website which showcases your articles on dev.to!
3. Spotify API
Like the DEV API, this API is very powerful. With Spotify's API, you can get metadata about music artists, albums, tracks, and user-related data.
Project Idea:
Create a website which can search Spotify with an image of an album cover.
4. YouTube API
The YouTube API is the official API for Google's YouTube. With this API, you can request for YouTube data and embed YouTube videos, the subscribe button, and more.
Project Idea:
Create a website which gives a YouTube video based on what a user searches (search app).
5. Twitter API
The Twitter API is the official API for the Twitter social media app. This API allows you to retrieve and engage with tweets, users, and more.
Project Idea:
Create a Node.js Twitter bot which can post Tweets, follow users, and do more actions on your account.
6. Twilio API
The Twilio API is extremely powerful and can be used for many things. I have personally used it to send messages from my Twilio phone number to another phone number.
Project Idea:
Create a Node.js bot which uses your Twilio phone number to greet your friends via messages when their birthday occurs.
7. Google Maps API
Using Google's Map service API, you can do things from embedding maps in your website to, for example, receiving a set of directions to a specific place.
Project Idea:
Create a restaurant search app which gives the user directions to the nearest restaurant.
8. Edamam API (Recipes)
The Edamam API is an API which gives back recipes for what a user would like to cook.
Project Idea:
Create a website which asks a user for what they would like to eat and returns a recipe on how to make it.
9. Stripe API
The Stripe API is an API which allows users to make payments and send it to your credit card. Its an extremely popular API for any websites which require payments.
Project Idea:
Create an e-commerce site which allows users to pay for goods on the website.
10. Finnhub API (Stock Market)
The Finnhub API allows you to retrieve data from the stock market. This API is trusted by many reputable companies such as Google and Tyson.
Project Idea:
Create an app which provides the latest stock values for the companies in the fortune 500 companies list.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading. I hope that know you know what an API is and some fun APIs to use with your next project! Let me know, in the comments, if you know of any other APIs which would be cool and fun to use.
Henry
Top comments (70)
Great collection. Feel free to use hoppscotch.io to spin up these APIs directly from your browser.
👽 Open source API development ecosystem https://hoppscotch.io
Thank you for sharing, it'll help. I’ve been mostly using postman.
Thanks for recommend, it's useful for us.
I have a question, I call an devto API from website hoppscotch and get blocked by CORS policy, how to solve this issue? Thank you.
You can try turning on Proxy mode from Settings page or you need to install Hoppscotch browser extension (links in readme) to fix CORS issues.
Browser extensions to provide more capabilities to https://hoppscotch.io
Thanks I turned it on but it seems like Proxy has an error. Would you might take a look ?
Yeah sure. I'll DM. Follow me to text you.
i see, to have had the same issue trying to call my localhost apis! The app works so well for my remote servers...would love to resolve the issue
If you are using a node project just try this out - local-cors-proxy
@Liyas Thomas
How is it different from Postman or what is your USP?
Hoppscotch is a progressive web app rather than an OS based standalone app. So you can test your APIs directly from your browser window without switching to another application. And can be used on your PC, tablet or even from your smartphone. And the resource consumption is 10x less when compared to a standalone app.
The best part is that whole project and ecosystem is open sourced.
GitHub:
👽 Open source API development ecosystem. https://hoppscotch.io
Being a 100% client side application, Hoppscotch can be hosted on any static hosting services or integrated to any internal application by any companies.
Read the story behind Hoppscotch:
Launching Hoppscotch v1.0 👽 - free, fast & beautiful API request builder 🎉
Liyas Thomas ・ Nov 5 '19 ・ 4 min read
Can we trust this with our key protected APIs ?
Hoppscotch is 100% open source.
GitHub: github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch
The app itself is a client-side application. Nothing ever leave from your browser whatsoever.
Hoppscotch is an awesome tool, I use it all the time! Thanks for reading!
Thanks 🎉
Amazing tool, as we all know 👍😉
Tho, what's the inspiration behind that name? 🙄 Sry, just curious 😀😀
A series of events occurred to came into a conclusion of renaming the project. You can check out my profile for specific articles but do check out this article for reason behind name.
Postwoman is changing name 🛸
Liyas Thomas ・ Aug 8 '20 ・ 1 min read
What a thoughtful idea behind it @ben 🦗👍
I also like PokeApi and SWAPI.
They sound cool. I will definitely check them out. Thanks for reading!
Spotify used to have apps within its app that you could develop in HTML+JS with the Spotify API. I submitted an idea for a trivia game that got initial approval, and a Spotify person even helped me get it ready. Still, they rejected the game because the data from the Spotify API was incorrect and could create confusion in the players. They suggested using Spotify's API for album covers and a little more and another music API for the data (dates, names, etc.), making it really tough for a single dev like me to complete the game. In the end, I abandoned the project (luckily for me because Spotify killed the apps shortly after). This was one of the reasons why I slowed down using 3rd party APIs. Unless they improved their data considerably, I would be wary of using the Spotify API.
Sorry, my comment came out a bit negative.
The post actually looks interesting, and I am curious about trying a couple of the APIs that you mention. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for your insight. Have fun playing with some of the APIs on this list!
Hi Henry,
First of all, awesome article!
I recently did a project using NASA API, it's just to add to the list :)
It has some cool things you can do and it's free to use!
api.nasa.gov/
That’s a great one! Thanks for reading.
I really like the finnhub one, could be a worthy successor to good old yahoo finance.
I'll give that a shot, thanks for the cool idea : ).
Here's one in case you're a Pokemon fan. They have sprites as well, if you want to get visual.
pokeapi.co/
I think the Finnhub API is the successor to the Yahoo Finance API. The pokeapi is a classic, a great API. Thanks for reading!
Thanks! I made currex which is a CLI currency converter between all supported currencies on exchangerate-api.com using the free interface (your own api key is required, but you don't need to pay). I've wanted a CLI currency converter for a while now, so this finally made me do it (:
examples for use:
npx currex aud to cadornpx currex 23.99 aud to zarSo cool! Thanks for reading!
Well-compiled list.
Found this repo has the list of APIs
github.com/public-apis/public-apis
That’s a great resource!
FWIW, you can also check this blog 😁
You can also check this public list of API's
Hope this is helpful 😊
public-apis.io is new one.
That's a cool one!
I also like DEV Api, I'm building something around it for the #dohackathon, you might be interested in it:
DevAnalytics at DOHackathon: cards everywhere
Sandor Dargo ・ Dec 24 '20 ・ 1 min read
Awesome work! Thanks for reading.
Awesome list, thanks for sharing!
In case you're interested, I've put up some free APIs on devresourc.es/tools-and-utilities/..., so feel free to check them out too! :)