5 Free APIs Every Developer Should Bookmark in 2026

Most developers know about the big APIs (Google, AWS, Stripe). But there's a growing ecosystem of specialized APIs that solve real problems and won't cost you a dime to start. Here are 5 APIs with free tiers that I use in production. Each one saves hours of building custom scrapers or paying for expensive enterprise tools. 1. Google Maps Scraper — Local Business Intelligence Problem: Google Places API costs $17/1K requests. You need local business data for a lead gen tool. curl "https://google-maps-scraper12.p.rapidapi.com/google-maps-scraper/search?query=dentist+new+york" \ -H "X-RapidAPI-Key: YOUR_KEY" -H "X-RapidAPI-Host: google-maps-scraper12.p.rapidapi.com" Returns: business name, phone, address, rating, reviews, website, coordinates. 👉 Try it free 2. Email Extractor — Contact Discovery Problem: You have a list of company websites but need email addresses for outreach. curl "https://email-extractor1.p.rapidapi.com/email-extractor/extract?url=https://example.com" \ -H "X-RapidAPI-K