Stop Paying for APIs You Can Get for Free (A Developer's Guide to Free Data)

I just audited the APIs my team uses. We're paying $340/month for data we could get for free. Here's the thing: most popular paid APIs have free alternatives that are just as good (or better) for 90% of use cases. The Free API Ecosystem Is Huge I've cataloged 100+ free APIs over the past month. Here's a taste: Financial data (replaces Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance Pro, CoinMarketCap Pro): CoinGecko: 13,000 crypto coins, no key needed SEC EDGAR: Every public company filing, no key needed FRED: 800,000 economic datasets, free key Alpha Vantage: Stock prices & 50+ indicators, free key US Treasury: National debt data, no key needed News & content (replaces Meltwater, Mention, Brand24): NewsAPI: 80,000+ sources, 100 req/day free Hacker News API: Unlimited, no key Dev.to API: Articles and tags, 30/min Location & maps (replaces built-in solutions): Open-Meteo: Weather for any location, no key IP-API: Geolocation, 45/min REST Countries: Country data, unlimited Developer tools (replaces paid monitor