Book & Dictionary APIs
Free book, dictionary and language APIs with working curl examples: word definitions, ISBN lookups, public-domain ebooks, rhymes and poetry. No key required.
19 tested APIs with full docs · 19 need no key · 40 more listed
Tested, with full documentation
We called each of these before publishing. Every page carries a working curl command, the real JSON response it returned, parameters and common errors.
Bible API
Free Bible API with no key: fetch any verse, passage or chapter as JSON with multiple translations. Simple URL-based reference lookup. Tested example.
Verified 19 Aug 2026
Datamuse
Free word-finding API with no key: rhymes, synonyms, antonyms, related words, spelling suggestions and autocomplete. 100k requests/day. Tested example.
Verified 19 Aug 2026
dBooks
Free ebook API with no key: search and browse freely downloadable books with title, subtitle, authors, cover image and a download page link. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Free Dictionary API
Free dictionary API with no key: definitions, phonetics, audio pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms and examples for English words. Tested curl example.
Verified 19 Aug 2026
Gita API (Telugu & Odia)
Free Bhagavad Gita API with no key: any verse in Telugu, Odia, English or Spanish with word-by-word meanings, translation, commentary and audio. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
GurbaniNow
Free Gurbani API with no key: any ang of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib with Gurmukhi script, transliteration, translations and larivaar rendering. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Gutendex (Project Gutenberg)
Free Project Gutenberg API with no key: search 75,000+ public domain ebooks with authors, subjects, download links and full text in multiple formats. Tested.
Verified 20 Aug 2026
MangaDex
Free manga API with no key: search titles with multilingual names, descriptions, tags, status and demographics across a large community-maintained database. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Open Library
Free book API from the Internet Archive: search by ISBN, title or author, with covers, publication data and subjects. No key required. Tested curl example.
Verified 19 Aug 2026
PoetryDB
Free poetry API with no key: full poem text by author, title or line count from a public-domain corpus. CORS enabled. Tested curl example and live JSON.
Verified 19 Aug 2026
PotterAPI (Fedeperin)
Free Harry Potter API with no key: books, characters, houses and spells in eight languages, with covers and images. Tested curl example and live response.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Al Quran Cloud
Free Quran API with no key: Arabic text, translations in 40+ languages, verse-by-verse audio recitations and multiple editions. Tested curl example.
Verified 19 Aug 2026
Quran.com API
Free Quran API with no key: all 114 chapters with Arabic and transliterated names, revelation order and place, verse counts and page ranges. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Sefaria
Free Sefaria API with no key: Hebrew and English texts of the Tanakh, Talmud, Mishnah and commentaries, with version metadata, licensing and interlinked references. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Stephen King API
Free Stephen King API with no key: every novel with year, publisher, ISBN and page count, plus villains and short stories cross-linked between them. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Wikiquote
Free Wikiquote MediaWiki API with no key: sourced quotations by person, work or topic, with attribution. Random pages and full-text search. Tested example.
Verified 20 Aug 2026
Wiktionary REST
Free Wiktionary REST API with no key: word definitions across hundreds of languages with parts of speech, examples and etymology. CORS enabled. Tested.
Verified 20 Aug 2026
Wizard World API
Free wizarding world API with no key: elixirs, spells, houses, ingredients and wizards, with effects, side effects, difficulty and inventor links. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Wolne Lektury
Free Wolne Lektury API with no key: thousands of Polish public domain books with full texts, audiobooks, covers and literary epoch metadata. Tested example included.
Verified 21 Aug 2026
Choosing between these Book & Dictionary APIs
This category covers text and language data: dictionary definitions with phonetics and parts of speech, library catalogue lookups by ISBN, and full public-domain book text.
The Free Dictionary API and Datamuse are the two standouts for building word games, writing tools or vocabulary features — both are key-free, and Datamuse in particular supports an unusually expressive query syntax for rhymes, synonyms and semantic similarity.
More Book & Dictionary APIs in the directory
40 further APIs in this category, of which 23 need no API key. These are catalogued from the public-API lists and link straight to each provider's own documentation — we have not tested them yet, so treat the auth and CORS flags as the upstream list's claim rather than ours. They are promoted to a full tested page as we work through them.
| API | What it does | Auth |
|---|---|---|
| A Bíblia Digital | Do not worry about managing the multiple versions of the Bible | Key |
| Amanah Sunnah | Semantic search across Quran, Hadith, Tafsir & 18K+ Rijal narrators | KeyCORS |
| Bhagavad Gita | Open Source Shrimad Bhagavad Gita API including 21+ authors translation in Sanskrit/English/Hindi | KeyCORS |
| Bhagavad Gita | Bhagavad Gita text | OAuthCORS |
| Bhagavad Gita telugu | Bhagavad Gita API in telugu and odia languages | NoneCORS |
| Big Book | The Big Book API allows you to semantically search, filter, sort, and recommend books | KeyCORS |
| British National Bibliography | Books | None |
| Chinese Character Web | Chinese character definitions and pronunciations | None |
| Chinese Text Project | Online open-access digital library for pre-modern Chinese texts | None |
| Collins | Bilingual Dictionary and Thesaurus Data | Key |
| Crossref Metadata Search | Books & Articles Metadata | None |
| Free Dictionary | Definitions, phonetics, pronounciations, parts of speech, examples, synonyms | None |
| Ganjoor | Classic Persian poetry works including access to related manuscripts, recitations and music tracks | OAuthCORS |
| Google Books | Books | OAuth |
| Gutendex | Web-API for fetching data from Project Gutenberg Books Library | None |
| Harry Potter | API to get data from Harry Potter books, movies and characters | NoneCORS |
| Holy Bible API | Free Bible API serving 800+ text translations and 40+ audio translations | None |
| Indonesia Dictionary | Indonesia dictionary many words | None |
| KDP Intelligence | KDP niche demand scores, competition analysis and revenue estimates | NoneCORS |
| Library Management | Manage users, books, authors, loans and reviews | NoneCORS |
| Lingua Robot | Word definitions, pronunciations, synonyms, antonyms and others | KeyCORS |
| Merriam-Webster | Dictionary and Thesaurus Data | Key |
| OwlBot | Definitions with example sentence and photo if available | KeyCORS |
| Oxford | Dictionary Data | Key |
| Penguin Publishing | Books, book covers and related data | NoneCORS |
| Quran | RESTful Quran API with multiple languages | NoneCORS |
| Quran Cloud | A RESTful Quran API to retrieve an Ayah, Surah, Juz or the entire Holy Quran | NoneCORS |
| Quran-api | Free Quran API Service with 90+ different languages and 400+ translations | NoneCORS |
| Runyankole Bible | Free REST API for the Runyankore-Rukiga Bible — 66 books, 31106 verses | NoneCORS |
| Scholar Sidekick | Resolve scholarly IDs (DOI, PMID, ISBN, arXiv) and format citations in multiple styles | NoneCORS |
| Stephen King | The varied works and characters of the prolific author Stephen King | None |
| Synonyms | Synonyms, thesaurus and antonyms information for any given word | Key |
| The Bible | Everything you need from the Bible in one discoverable place | Key |
| Thirukkural | 1330 Thirukkural poems and explanation in Tamil and English | NoneCORS |
| Urantia Papers | Full-text + semantic search across the Urantia Papers, with audio narration, entities, translations | NoneCORS |
| Wiktionary | Collaborative dictionary data | NoneCORS |
| Wizard World | Get information from the Harry Potter universe | NoneCORS |
| Wordnik | Dictionary Data | Key |
| Words | Definitions and synonyms for more than 150,000 words | Key |
| WordsAPI | An API for the English Language. Find definitions, related words, and more | Key |
Turn API responses into results
Once the request works you still have to do something with what comes back. These run in your browser, free, with nothing uploaded.
JSON Formatter
Paste a raw response and read it indented, folded and colour-coded.
JSON Path Finder
Click any value to get the path that reaches it in your own code.
JSON to TypeScript
Turn a captured response into typed interfaces before you write the fetch.
CSV to JSON Converter
Turn a spreadsheet into the request body a POST endpoint expects.
Unix Timestamp Converter
Decode the epoch fields almost every API returns.
JWT Decoder
Read the claims and expiry inside a bearer token without pasting it anywhere.
PDF Table to CSV
Pull a table out of a PDF so it can be posted to an API as data.
Event Schema Generator
Publish what an API returns as structured data search engines can read.