Every Free Public API I Found That Actually Works (2026 Edition)

I Tested 50+ Free APIs. These 20 Actually Work. No broken endpoints. No surprise paywalls. No deprecated docs. Every API on this list was tested in March 2026. Data & Research API What It Does Key Needed? Rate Limit OpenAlex 250M+ research papers No 100K/day Crossref 140M+ DOIs and metadata No (polite pool) 50/sec ORCID 18M researcher profiles No 24/sec Semantic Scholar 200M papers + AI recommendations Yes (free) 100/5min Internet Archive 800B archived web pages No Be polite Wikipedia 60M+ articles, 300 languages No Be polite Weather & Geo API What It Does Key Needed? Rate Limit Open-Meteo Weather forecast + historical No 10K/day OpenStreetMap/Nominatim Geocoding, reverse geocoding No 1/sec OSRM Driving/walking/cycling routes No Fair use ip-api.com IP geolocation No 45/min Security & Infrastructure API What It Does Key Needed? Rate Limit Have I Been Pwned Password breach check No Unlimited crt.sh SSL certificate transparency No Be polite Shodan Internet device search Yes (free tier) 10