API 1: Weatherstack
Weatherstack is a widely-used API for tracking real-time and historical weather data. Built and maintained by apilayer, a software company based in London and Vienna, weatherstack compiles data from various large weather stations and weather data providers to keep weather information from nearly anywhere on Earth accurate and updated. Weatherstack offers its API at 5 pricing tiers based on number of monthly API requests:
- Free, allowing 250 API calls per month
- Standard ($9.99/month, $8.99/month if billed yearly), providing 50,000 calls/month, overage charges of $.00023976 per API call, standard support, location lookup, HTTPS encryption, astronomy data, hour-by-hour data, and full historical data
- Professional ($49.99/month, $43.99/month yearly), providing 300,000 calls/month, overage charges of $.00019996/call, and all Standard features, plus 7-day forecast data, 40 languages, and bulk queries
- Business ($99.99/month, $84.99/month yearly), providing 1,000,000 calls/month, overage charges of $.000119988/call, 14-day forecast data, and all Professional features
- Enterprise, consisting of all plan features, with custom pricing and solutions tailored to business needs
API 2: Templated
Templated is an API providing templates for images, allowing developers to create social media visuals, banners, PDFs, and more. Their template gallery displays some of their most frequently used styles of templates with different examples for each, such as certificates, podcast feeds, news program schedules, and many more. Templated has a free trial, providing 50 API credits (each credit providing 1 image render), after which you can upgrade to one of the following pricing tiers:
- Starter ($29/month), providing 1,000 images or PDFs, up to 10 templates, Zapier integration (web automation tool), and Email support
- Scale ($99/month), providing 5,000 images or PDFs, up to 25 templates, all Starter plan benefits, and chat support
- Enterprise ($179/month), providing 25,000 images or PDFs, unlimited templates, all Scale plan benefits, and priority support
API 3: RandomDog
Random.dog is a very simple API that provides a random image of a dog. The only endpoint of Random.dog is https://random.dog/woof.json, which returns a URL to a randomly selected image out of a collection of 1,030 images. Random.dog is completely free to use. Additional documentation on implementing Random.dog is available at Public APIs and developer AdenFlorian's (David Valachovic) GitHub page.
Summary
There are a huge amount of APIs available for public use. Many APIs have useful functionality, providing information such as weather, stock market updates, or air traffic status; many others provide design tools, user accessibility features, and virus/malware/phishing detectors; and many more still have very specific and low-impact purposes, such as random pictures and facts about dogs, cats, and other animals, or information about television shows, music, art, and many other forms of entertainment. Without having to pay a cent, many of these APIs are available and usable for anyone with the know-how to implement them.