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.
Datamuse
Free word-finding API with no key: rhymes, synonyms, antonyms, related words, spelling suggestions and autocomplete. 100k requests/day. Tested example.
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.
Free Dictionary API
Free dictionary API with no key: definitions, phonetics, audio pronunciation, synonyms, antonyms and examples for English words. Tested curl example.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 |