14 Cool APIs That Are Weird, Useless, and Weirdly Useful

14 Cool APIs That Are Weird, Useless, and Weirdly Useful

Last updated: September 25, 2026

01Introduction

These are 14 free or cheap APIs that return something funny, strange, or oddly specific with a single request. Most need no API key. All of them are good for a demo, a Slack bot, a test fixture, or ten minutes of joy on a Friday afternoon.

The internet has a lot of fun APIs. The public-apis list on GitHub has over 480,000 stars and a whole category for jokes. We picked the ones we'd actually call twice, tested each one, and put the real responses below.

Pro tip before you start: don't paste 14 curl commands into your terminal one by one. Save them in Voiden and test them all in one place.

021. Yes/No API: outsource your decisions

Yes/No: ask a question, get "yes" or "no" and a GIF to back it up.

curl https://yesno.wtf/api

{
  "answer": "no",
  "forced": false,
  "image": "https://yesno.wtf/assets/no/14-cb78bf7104f848794808d61b9cd83eba.gif"
}

Actually useful for: a "should we deploy on Friday?" button in Slack. (It will say yes sometimes. Don't listen.) Catch: no way to ask it an actual question. It already knows.

032. Kanye.rest: a random Kanye West quote

Kanye.rest: one endpoint, one quote, zero context.

curl https://api.kanye.rest/

{"quote": "You can't look at a glass half full or empty if it's overflowing."}

Actually useful for: placeholder text that's more fun than lorem ipsum. Catch: your product manager may start quoting it in standups.

Test Kanye.rest with Voiden →

043. HTTP Cats: a cat for every status code

HTTP Cats has every HTTP status code, illustrated by a cat. https://http.cat/404 is a cat that can't be found. https://http.cat/418 is a cat in a teapot.

curl -o teapot.jpg https://http.cat/418

That 418 is real, by the way. "418 I'm a teapot" comes from RFC 2324, the Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol, an April Fools' spec published on April 1, 1998. It says any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should return 418, and that the response body "MAY be short and stout."

Actually useful for: custom error pages people screenshot instead of rage-quitting. Catch: returns images, not JSON. The cat does not care.

054. Excuser: excuses on demand

Excuser serves excuses in nine categories, from family and office to gaming. The developers category is the one you want.

curl https://excuser-three.vercel.app/v1/excuse/developers

[{"id": 702, "excuse": "The coffee machine stopped working today!", "category": "developers"}]

Actually useful for: the auto-reply on your standup bot. Catch: your team lead has read the same list.

065. Corporate BS Generator: phrases for the next all-hands

The Corporate BS Generator returns a sentence of pure corporate filler.

curl https://corporatebs-generator.sameerkumar.website/

{"phrase": "Monotonectally Repurpose Market Positioning Data"}

Actually useful for: testing how your UI handles very long, very confident words. Catch: someone will put it in a real slide deck.

Test it with Voiden →

076. Generate Fake Company Info (ApyHub): startups that don't exist

Our entry. The Generate Fake Company Info API (by Dosvak, in the ApyHub catalog) returns up to 50 fake companies per call, each with a name, email, website, phone, address, and an industry. The industries read like the Corporate BS Generator got a job.

curl "https://api.eu.apyhub.com/dosvak/fake-company?count=1" \
  -H "apy-token: $APY_TOKEN"

{
  "count": 1,
  "data": [
    {
      "name": "Mcdaniel LLC",
      "email": "[email protected]",
      "website": "https://macdonald-long.biz/",
      "phone": "6763117286",
      "address": "7820 Warren Lake Suite 810, Calebview, MI 70148",
      "industry": "harness next-generation networks"
    }
  ]
}

Actually useful for: seeding a CRM demo, a B2B dashboard, or a test database without using real customer data. Pair it with the Generate Fake Person Info API for the humans who work at Mcdaniel LLC. Catch: needs a free ApyHub key. The free Starter plan covers it, no card required.

087. icanhazdadjoke: dad jokes as a service

icanhazdadjoke: set the Accept header and it returns JSON instead of a web page.

curl -H "Accept: application/json" https://icanhazdadjoke.com/

{
  "id": "R7UfaahVfFd",
  "joke": "My dog used to chase people on a bike a lot. It got so bad I had to take his bike away.",
  "status": 200
}

Actually useful for: a good first example of content negotiation. Same URL, different response, depending on the Accept header. Catch: the jokes. They're dad jokes.

098. Chuck Norris API: now with a dev category

The Chuck Norris API serves random Chuck Norris facts, with categories and search. The dev category is for you.

curl "https://api.chucknorris.io/jokes/random?category=dev"

{
  "categories": ["dev"],
  "id": "rrt0vtiiqyi66shbp4qhiw",
  "value": "MySpace actually isn't your space, it's Chuck's (he just lets you use it)."
}

(Response shortened.)

Actually useful for: practicing query parameters. Catch: some jokes are older than your junior devs.

Test Chuck with Voiden. He'd approve. →

109. Bored API: something to do instead of refactoring

The Bored API (a teaching API from The App Brewery) suggests an activity, with the number of participants, a price score, and whether it's kid-friendly. Limit: 100 requests every 15 minutes.

curl https://bored-api.appbrewery.com/random

{
  "activity": "Prepare a dish from a foreign culture",
  "type": "cooking",
  "participants": 1,
  "price": 0.2,
  "duration": "hours",
  "kidFriendly": true
}

(Response shortened.)

Actually useful for: team offsite planning when nobody wants to decide. Catch: it never suggests "fix the flaky test."

1110. Useless Facts: exactly what it says

Useless Facts returns a random fact with its source, in English or German.

curl https://uselessfacts.jsph.pl/api/v2/facts/random

{
  "text": "In \"Silence of the Lambs\", Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins) never blinks.",
  "source": "djtech.net",
  "language": "en"
}

(Response shortened.)

Actually useful for: loading screens. Users forgive a 3-second spinner if they learn something weird. Catch: now you'll watch the movie to check.

1211. Advice Slip: unsolicited life advice

Advice Slip gives one piece of advice per call.

curl https://api.adviceslip.com/advice

{"slip": {"id": 103, "advice": "Respect your elders."}}

Actually useful for: the empty state of a to-do app. Catch: advice is cached for 2 seconds, so rapid calls return the same slip. That makes it a nice lesson in API caching too.

Test it with Voiden →

1312. Deck of Cards API: a casino without the casino

The Deck of Cards API lets you shuffle a deck, draw cards, and build piles. It keeps state per deck_id.

curl "https://deckofcardsapi.com/api/deck/new/shuffle/?deck_count=1"

{
  "success": true,
  "deck_id": "rmi2nujmhna0",
  "remaining": 52,
  "shuffled": true
}

Actually useful for: learning stateful APIs. Draw with /api/deck/<deck_id>/draw/?count=2 and watch remaining go down. Catch: you will build blackjack instead of your actual ticket.

1413. Agify: guess someone's age from their first name

Agify: send a name, get a predicted age based on how popular the name was over time. Agify says its dataset covers about 1 billion people, and the free tier gives you 2,500 requests a month.

curl "https://api.agify.io/?name=nikolas"

Actually useful for: a surprisingly good demo of how name trends track birth years. Catch: it will guess wrong about you, and you'll take it personally.

1514. Detect Tech Stack (ApyHub): see what a website is built with

Our second entry. Send any URL to the Detect Tech Stack API and get back the technologies it runs on. Here's what it says about us:

curl -X POST "https://api.eu.apyhub.com/chisleroff/detect-tech-stack" \
  -H "apy-token: $APY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url": "https://apyhub.com"}'

{
  "technologies": ["Next.js", "Tailwind CSS", "Google Tag Manager", "Google Analytics"],
  "source_url": "https://apyhub.com"
}

Actually useful for: competitor research, sales prospecting, or settling the "are they really using Rust?" debate in your group chat. Catch: it can only see what the page exposes. Your competitor's secret microservice stays secret.

Both ApyHub entries are also available through ApyHub MCP, so an AI agent can find and call them without a hand-written wrapper or tool definition. Yes, your agent can generate fake companies now.

Browse more APIs in the catalog →

16Test them all with Voiden

Fourteen curl commands in your shell history is a mess. Voiden is a free, open-source API client that saves each request as a plain Markdown file in your Git repo. Put all 14 in one folder, run them whenever you need a laugh, and commit the collection so your team can use it too.

Download Voiden →

17Conclusion

None of these APIs will get you promoted. A few of them are great teaching tools: content negotiation (icanhazdadjoke), query parameters (Chuck Norris), stateful endpoints (Deck of Cards), caching (Advice Slip), and fake test data (Fake Company Info). Collect them in Voiden, run them together, and you have a fun API playground in one Git repo.

Try ApyHub free, no card required →

18FAQ

What are some cool free APIs to try? Yes/No, Kanye.rest, HTTP Cats, icanhazdadjoke, Chuck Norris, Deck of Cards, and Advice Slip are free and need no API key. The Fake Company Info and Detect Tech Stack APIs on ApyHub run on the free Starter plan.

Which fun APIs don't need an API key? All the non-ApyHub entries in this list work without a key. Agify is free up to 2,500 requests a month.

What's a good fun API for beginners? icanhazdadjoke. One URL, one header, and you learn how the Accept header changes a response.

Can I use these APIs in production? Treat the free hobby APIs as best-effort. They can change or go offline. For anything customer-facing, cache responses or use an API with a published plan.

How do I test all these APIs in one place? Save each request in Voiden and keep them in one folder. Postman and curl scripts work too, but Voiden keeps everything as plain Markdown files in Git.

Where can I find more fun APIs? The public-apis repo on GitHub has hundreds, and the ApyHub catalog has a growing set of practical ones, including fake data generators.

19About ApyHub

ApyHub is a curated API catalog and trusted operational layer for developers and AI agents. It gives teams access to a growing catalog of over 1,500 endpoints and capabilities through a single subscription, priced in atoms (a per-call unit that reflects the actual work of each request). Every API carries machine-readable certification covering GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001 [VERIFY: ApyHub's own SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits are in progress; confirm this wording], and every endpoint is MCP-ready by default. ApyHub is headquartered in Amsterdam, with offices in the Netherlands, Greece, and India, and supports 65,000+ monthly developer workspaces [VERIFY: re-confirm]. The free tier requires no credit card. API providers can publish on ApyHub at apyhub.com/become-a-provider.