38 Awesome APIs to Inspire Your Next Software Project
Tags: api, webdev, programming, javascript
Published: 2023-02-13 13:44:47

As a developer, you will almost always have to use APIs in your projects. APIs are an essential component of both software development and our digital world. They enable two distinct software systems to communicate and exchange data. 

In this article, I compiled a list of 38 incredible APIs comprising finance, sports, science, movies, food, and many other exciting and cool APIs that you could use in your next software project. They are simple to set up and free, so you don't have to be concerned about how to handle OAuth.

### Category
I alphabetized each API based on the industry class to which it belongs.

- Art & Design (3)
- Dictionaries (2)
- Environment & Geo-Coding (2)
- Finance (5)
- Food & Drink (3)
- Humor & Personality (9)
- Music, Movies & Poems (5)
- Science & Math (3)
- Sports (1)
- Test Data (5) 


### Art & Design

[Art Institute of Chicago](https://api.artic.edu/docs/)

The Art Institute of Chicago's API is a REST-style service that provides JSON-formatted data and allows you to explore and integrate the museum's public data into your projects.

[Emoji Hub](https://github.com/cheatsnake/emojihub)

EmojiHub allows you to get random emojis from pre-sorted categories and groups. You can also get a complete list of emojis by category, group, or the entire emoji database, which contains 1791 objects. All emoji data is stored in a simple JSON object from which you can get html codes to insert into your web applications.

[xColors](https://x-colors.herokuapp.com/)

xColors is a completely free service that allows you to get random colors and convert them into different color models (HEX, RGB and HSL are supported). All data is provided in a convenient JSON format, allowing you to use it immediately for CSS styling without further validation.


### Dictionaries

[Free Dictionary API](https://dictionaryapi.dev/)

The Free Dictionary API gives you access to an English word database that includes definitions, phonetics, pronunciations, parts of speech, examples, and synonyms.

[Merriam-Webster Dictionary API](https://dictionaryapi.com/)

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary API provides you with access to a vast collection of dictionary and thesaurus content, as well as specialized medical, Spanish, ESL, and student-friendly vocabulary.


### Environment & Geo-Coding

[Open Weather Map](https://openweathermap.org/api)

OpenWeatherMap is an online service that provides global weather data via API for any geographical location, including current weather data, forecasts, nowcasts, and historical weather data.

[REST Countries API](https://restcountries.com/)

It provides detailed information about countries such as their capital, local currency, languages, code, capital city, region via a RESTful API.


### Finance

[Frankfurter](https://www.frankfurter.app/docs/)

Frankfurter is an API that provides currency data and allows you to track available exchange rates published by the European Central Bank.

[Coinranking](https://developers.coinranking.com/api/documentation)

Coinranking API provides information for incorporating real-time cryptocurrency prices such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin into your app or website. It also provides metadata on each coin listed, such as circulating supply, block explorers, trading pairs, logos, and other information.

[Coinbase](https://www.coinbase.com/cloud)

The Coinbase Cloud API lets you integrate Coinbase's crypto payment or trading APIs, data access, or staking infrastructure into your projects.

[Exchange Rate API](https://www.exchangerate-api.com/)

The Exchange Rate API provides currency conversion rates for 161 currencies.

[Blockchain API](https://www.blockchain.com/api)

The Blockchain API allows you to send and receive payments from Blockchain Wallets, as well as data from transactions and blocks.


### Food & Drink

[The Meal DB API](https://www.themealdb.com/api.php)

An open, crowd-sourced recipe database from around the world. It also provides a free JSON API for anyone who wants to use it.

[The Cocktail DB API](https://www.thecocktaildb.com/api.php)

A free and open database of drinks and cocktails from around the world. It also provides a free JSON API for anyone who wants to use it.

[Wine-Searcher](https://www.wine-searcher.com/trade/ws-api)

A search engine that locates the best prices for wines, beers, and spirits all over the world.


### Humor & Personality 

[Techy](https://techy-api.vercel.app/)

Generate cool tech-savvy sounding phrases easily

[Excuser](https://excuser.herokuapp.com/)

This API is a simple excuse generator. It's a simple API that allows you to get a random excuse. You can use it to get random excuses for a specific person or a specific categories. It is free to use.

[Meme Maker](https://mememaker.github.io/API/)

The Meme Maker API is a REST API to create your own meme

[Advice Slip](https://api.adviceslip.com/)

It is an external API that generates random advice slips.

[Inspiration](https://api.goprogram.ai/inspiration/docs/)

This API generates quotes to motivate or inspire you!

[Traitify](https://app.traitify.com/developer)

Every user is a person with a personality just waiting to be discovered. With this in mind, the Traitify API has developed a diverse set of enjoyable visual assessments for determining personality types and traits.

[Kanye.rest](https://kanye.rest/)

A free REST API for random Kanye West quotes (Kanye as a Service)

[aztro](https://aztro.readthedocs.io/en/latest/)

aztro is an API that provides horoscope info for sun signs such as Lucky Number, Lucky Color, Mood, Color, Compatibility with other sun signs, description of a sign for that day etc.

[Quote Garden](https://pprathameshmore.github.io/QuoteGarden/)

It is a REST API for more than 5000 famous quotes


### Music, Movies & Poems

[MusixMatch](https://developer.musixmatch.com/)

Musixmatch lyrics API is a robust service that permits you to search and retrieve lyrics in the simplest possible way.

[Genrenator](https://binaryjazz.us/genrenator-api/)

As a developer, you may require a random genre or a story about a genre in particular. The Genrenator API has an endpoint for retrieving a random genre or genre story.

[The Movie Db (TMDb)](https://www.themoviedb.org/documentation/api)

The MovieDB API provides all of the data required to build a movie app. It's a very useful API for retrieving information about movies, actor images, TV shows, and much more.

[The IMDb](https://imdb-api.com/)

The IMDb-API is a web service for receiving movie, serial and cast information. APIs results is a JSON and includes items such as movie specifications, images, posters, trailers, ratings, Wikipedia page content and more.

[Poems](https://poems.one/api/poem/)

The Poem API returns the poem of the day as well as random poems. You can also search for poems by author, tag, or keyword, as well as access a private poem collection.


### Science & Math

[NASA](https://api.nasa.gov/) 

NASA offers a series of APIs that are beneficial to application developers. These APIs provide access to various types of data about astronomy, space weather, the Moon, Mars, and other topics.

[Numbers API](https://math.tools/api/numbers/)

The Numbers API provides a number of the day, a random number, number facts, and anything else you can think of that involves numbers.

[SpaceX REST API](https://github.com/r-spacex/SpaceX-API)

It is an Open Source REST API for launch, rocket, core, capsule, starlink, launchpad, and landing pad data.


### Sports

[Football Standings](https://github.com/azharimm/football-standings-api) 

Display football standings e.g epl, la liga, serie a etc. The data is based on ESPN site.


### Test Data 

[Fake JSON](https://fakejson.com/documentation)

fakeJSON was designed to get you up and running with fake mock data in no time.

[Fake Store](https://fakestoreapi.com/)

fakeStoreApi can be used with any type of shopping project that needs products, carts, and users in JSON format.

[JSON Placeholder](http://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/)

It is a free fake API for testing and prototyping.

[Toolcarton](https://testimonialapi.toolcarton.com/)

Tired of copy and pasting lorem user's testimonial text which doesn't give the feel of authenticity, don't worry try testimonial API to get dummy testimonial data that includes user id, name, location, designation, avatar, message and rating.

[Random User Generator](https://randomuser.me/)

A free, open-source API for generating random user data. Like Lorem Ipsum, but for people.




### Conclusion
These are some of the best APIs for use in your projects.  Several APIs help developers improve their performance and save time. Here are some more resources for discovering new and exciting APIs:


- [A collective list of free APIs for use in software and web development](https://github.com/public-apis/public-apis)

- [Rapid API Hub](https://rapidapi.com/hub)


I hope you found this article informative. What APIs have you used, and how have you found them to be useful? Let's talk about it in the comments section. Thank you ! , Vielen Dank!, Gracias!

Continue to IMAGINE. Remember that we live in an IMAGINATIVE world ❤.