A Curated List of 25 Amazing Public APIs to Use in 2022
Introduction
Do you know what an API is? Chances are, even if you don’t, you’ve heard the term or used APIs directly or indirectly. An application programming interface, better known as API, is a set of protocols or pre-defined commands that allow two applications to connect and interact.
For example, if you want to book a flight on Expedia, you use their API to connect to their system and access their information. Expedia in turn use the API provided by the airline companies to access flight details or book a ticket.
As it provides a secure highway for an entity to connect to another system, APIs have become an essential part of our digital world. Broadly speaking there are two types of APIs.
- Private APIs – These APIs are used by a company’s internal systems to communicate with one another and cannot be accessed by external systems.
- Public-facing APIs – Unlike Private APIs, these APIs can be accessed using a public URL on the internet. They provide a gateway to external systems or agents to access information held by the system.
This article will explore in depth about public facing APIs and some of the most common public-facing APIs available on the internet.
So, tell me more about Public Service APIs then?
Public APIs are a great way to enhance the capabilities of a software applications. These APIs provide easy-to-use interfaces that allow you to integrate various external services in your existing system.
They are especially essential for elevating the reach and impact of web and mobile applications. What more? Public APIs can reduce the cost of in-house development radically. Since public APIs are used and tested by thousands of people, they are less prone to error too. By implementing public APIs, you can create strong systems that are available 99% of the time for consumption.
Some of the best public APIs include the Coinbase Digital Currency API, Associated Press API, Eventbrite API, and OpenWeather API.
A Curated List of 25 Public Service APIs
From Hackathons to commercial projects, programmers love building things and one of these things is public API. Just check out these fun free APIs.
With the OpenWeather API, you can get your daily weather report of any city in over 200 countries! You’ll also get an access to historical data, if you want to get geeky about the weather facts or to build your own system to understand what the weather was like at any given time in the past.
You might have used this API a lot of time knowingly or unknowingly. Trying to get traffic conditions or planning your route? Google Maps API has it all. Plus, it offers satellite imagery, aerial imagery or even street imagery of the region you want mapped.
RainViewer is a free and easy-to-use API that allows you to access radar data for rainfall worldwide. The service gets all its information from various free web services across different networks, so there’s no need to worry about subscription fees or restrictions on the images that can be used in your application.
Travel Briefing API is the ultimate travel resource for anyone about to embark on a journey abroad. The site offers information such as health and vaccines and weather trends in your destination city, including the language, visa requirements, and forex details of your destination country.
With the Travel Time API, you can quickly calculate travel times between places and visualize them on a map. The API also shows the time required to reach your destination through different modes of transport and provide traffic conditions of your travel route.
The SportsDB API provides all the information you need about sports. You can find events, TV listings and artwork, and scores from any game in using the API. Moreover, it has always remained a free service.
The Fantasy Sports APIs provide a way to access information about your favorite sports. Using this API, you can find all the information on any team or player, including their latest stats. They have a simple API that has 99.99% uptime.
NASA Open API makes it easy for developers to access and use public data provided by NASA. This API provides information on topics such as earth science, or past and present space exploration missions.
Open Astronomy Catalog is a public API created by an independent developer to assist people looking to be informed about the events in our universe. It provides a massive list of curated catalogs that include details about all objects found in our universe.
Musixmatch Lyrics API lets you display the lyrics of any song on your website or in an application. This API can be particularly useful for developers are developing a music player application and want to display the lyrics of the song the application is playing. This API also provides information on the artist and the albums.
Songsterr is an open API that anyone can use to create their program with public data from Songsterr. The REST-style XML calls allow you access songs, tabs for guitars, bass and drums, including the chords for different keys.
SoundCloud API allows you to access the music hosted by the streaming platform – SoundCloud. It lets you upload, play, and engage with tracks on the platform. With the help of this API, you can search for any song using its metadata such as, description or title.
If you are an avid Harry Potter fan or want to build a service to cater to Harry Potter fans, look no further. Harry Potter API provides information about the characters such as their names, the house they belong to, their character paths, and spell routes.
SWAPI is an open-source API that allows you to build workflows using the Star Wars data. You can use over 600+ endpoints under this API to access every detail about Star Wars Universe including the details of the planets, spaceships, characters and species within that universe.
With the Marvel Comics API, you can access information on everything Marvel. This API lets you access information about upcoming publications including decade-old marvel gems like, The Amazing Spiderman #1.
Google Earth’s geospatial processing lets you with access data about our planet easily. This service lets you create an interactive environment where you can work together to large datasets offered by Google Earth Engine.
Think of Ueber Maps as the virtual road map that connects you with your surroundings. Using their API, you can find an exciting spot for your evening or a picture-perfect view for a romantic day out. You can even create and share public maps on their platform so everyone can enjoy them.
Coinbase Digital API lets you integrate the news and trends of the crypto market in your system. You can use this API to check the prices of crypto coins and trade them. With this API, you can generate, buy/sell, securely store, and retrieve bitcoins, litecoins, and ethereum wallets.
The Google Cloud Natural Language API helps developers with sentiment analysis, entity identification, and content classification so that they can build more intelligent apps. This API is also a part of the larger Cloud Machine Learning API family.
The QR Tag API provides a fun and interactive way to integrate QR codes in your project. The QR codes generated using this API cached so that they never disappear from any website or social media page.
- PredictionIO API
Apache PredictionIO API lets you interact with the free and open-source machine-learning server built on an advanced software stack. It is designed specially for developers or data scientists who want to make predictive engines. You can use this API with Spark MLLib or OpenNLP libraries to implement your own machine learning models.
Are you a Pokémon nerd? Well, if you want to build a system that revolves around Pokémons, look no further. Using the Pokémon API, you can request this API to search for information on any of your favorite Pokémon, and it will return details information about them in a blink of an eye.
Memes have become a part of our culture! And if you want to create one by yourself, you can use the Meme Generator API. Choose preloaded images and type in a few short top-and-bottom text sentences and this API will generate meme for you. Looking for an inspiration? This API has got you covered. You can also get popular memes using this API.
The Geeky Joke’s RESTful API is an excellent tool for those who want to add some geeky jokes in their application. Using this API, you can add new and random programming jokes in your website or mobile application easily.
The Cat API is for cat lovers — and who doesn’t love an adorable bundle of furry joy? Think of this API as a cat-astrophe. Ask for cat facts and this API sends them back at lightning speed. You can also use this API to create a list of cat breeds that you like. The best part? It is free!
Like the Cat API, this API is has been used as a free resource to educators, students and beginner developers alike, started by us, ThatAPICompany.com. With this API you can get all the facts about a dog breed, create a list of dog breeds you like, and more.
Final Thoughts
It can be tricky diving into the world of APIs, but we hope that this list gave you an idea of where the world sits in terms of public APIs. The possibilities are endless! Start using these public APIs in your application to create more engaging experience for your users.
Need more help getting started? Reach out to ThatAPICompany for a consultation.
