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Zelda API (fanapis)

Free Legend of Zelda API with no key: every game with developer, publisher and release date, plus characters, bosses, dungeons, items, places and monsters. Live example.

No API key requiredCORS enabledHTTPSFree tier

Endpoint tested and returned HTTP 200 on 2026-08-21

What is the Zelda API (fanapis)?

The Zelda API from fanapis is a free, key-free REST API covering The Legend of Zelda franchise. It serves games with their developer, publisher and release date alongside characters, bosses, dungeons, items, places, monsters and materials, each with a descriptive entry.

Franchise coverage here is broad rather than deep, which suits it well to reference and quiz applications. Games come back with developer and publisher credits and a paragraph of history; the character, boss, dungeon and item collections are similarly descriptive. What you will not find is per-game stat data — this is an encyclopedia, not a game database, and treating it as the latter leads to disappointment quickly.

Two field-level traps to know about before you build. `released_date` is free text with a leading space — `" February 21, 1986"` — so it is neither a date nor safe to trim-and-parse without checking the format first; different records use different conventions. And `count` reports what came back on this page, not the size of the collection, so paginating by comparing `count` against a running total never terminates. Ids are Mongo ObjectId hex strings, which are stable and fine as cache keys.

Quick facts

Base URL
https://zelda.fanapis.com/api
Authentication
No key or account. The API is free and community-maintained, with documentation on its own docs subdomain.
Rate limit
No rate-limit headers are returned. The dataset is static, so fetch it once and serve from your own store.
Pricing
Free.
CORS
Enabled — callable directly from browser JavaScript
Official docs
Read the docs

How to use the Zelda API (fanapis)

Every request below was executed against the live API on 2026-08-21, and the response shown is the real body it returned — not an illustration.

1. List Legend of Zelda games with release details

GET https://zelda.fanapis.com/api/games?limit=2

curl
curl 'https://zelda.fanapis.com/api/games?limit=2'
JavaScript (fetch)
const res = await fetch("https://zelda.fanapis.com/api/games?limit=2");
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${res.status}`);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
Python (requests)
import requests

res = requests.get("https://zelda.fanapis.com/api/games?limit=2", timeout=20)
res.raise_for_status()
print(res.json())
Response — HTTP 200 (truncated)
{
  "success": true,
  "count": 2,
  "data": [
    {
      "name": "The Legend of Zelda",
      "description": "The Legend of Zelda is the first installment of the Zelda series. It centers its plot around a boy named Link, who becomes the central protagonist throughout the series. It came out as early as 1986 for the Famicom in Japan, and was later released in the western world, including Europe and the US in 1987. It has since then been re-released several times, for the Nintendo GameCube as well as the Game Boy Advance. The Japanese version of the game on the Famicom is known as The Hyrule Fantasy: The Legend of Zelda. ",
      "developer": "Nintendo R&D 4",
      "publisher": "Nintendo",
      "released_date": " February 21, 1986",
      "id": "5f6ce9d805615a85623ec2b7"
    },
    {
      "name": "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past",
      "description": "One day, a band of evil thieves managed to open the gateway to the Sacred Realm, where the mystical Triforce was hidden. Upon finding the sacred golden relic, the leader of the thieves, Ganondorf, slew his followers and claimed it as his own. Before long, dark power began to flow forth from the Sacred Realm. People were drawn into this darkness, and never heard from again. As a result, the King of Hyrule ordered the seven sages to seal the entrance to the Sacred Realm. A great battle ensued—monsters poured into the Light World from the sacred land and attacked the castle. The Knights of Hyrule defended the sages during the great battle against evil, and, though most of them perished in the struggle, the sages were

Parameters

ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
resourcepath segmentRequiredCollection: `games`, `characters`, `bosses`, `dungeons`, `items`, `places`, `monsters` or `materials`. games
limitqueryOptionalRecords per page, honoured on collection endpoints. 2
pagequeryOptionalPage number, used with `limit`. 1
namequeryOptionalFilter a collection by name. Ganondorf
idpath segmentOptionalAppend a record id to fetch one entry. 5f6ce9d805615a85623ec2b7

Response fields

successboolean
Application-level result flag, present on every response alongside `count` and `data`.
countinteger
How many records are in `data` for this page — not the collection total. Do not paginate against it.
data[].idstring
A Mongo ObjectId hex string. Stable, and the right value to cache on.
data[].namestring
Display name of the game, character or item.
data[].descriptionstring
A paragraph of encyclopedia prose. Often several hundred words, so budget layout space.
data[].developer / publisherstring
Credits on game records — `Nintendo R&D 4`, `Nintendo` and so on.
data[].released_datestring
Free text with a LEADING SPACE, for example `" February 21, 1986"`. Not a parseable date, and formats vary between records.

What you can build with the Zelda API (fanapis)

  • Build a Legend of Zelda franchise timeline
  • Power a character or boss browser on a fan site
  • Generate quiz questions from item and dungeon descriptions
  • Add a Zelda lookup command to a Discord bot
  • Cross-reference which characters appear across which games

Common errors and how to fix them

404

Unknown collection or id.

Fix: Collections are lowercase and plural. Ids are 24-character hex ObjectIds, not names or slugs.

An empty data array with success: true

The `name` filter matched nothing.

Fix: Check `count` before indexing into `data`; a miss is a successful request with zero results, not an error.

Date parsing failures

`released_date` is free text and starts with a space.

Fix: Trim it, then parse defensively with a fallback — record formats are not consistent across the collection.

Pagination that never ends

You compared `count` against an expected total.

Fix: `count` is per page. Page until `data` comes back empty instead.

Zelda API (fanapis) — frequently asked questions

Is there a free Legend of Zelda API?

Yes. The fanapis Zelda API needs no key or account and covers games, characters, bosses, dungeons, items, places, monsters and materials, each with a descriptive entry.

Does it include Breath of the Wild item data?

It covers the franchise at an encyclopedia level — games, characters, bosses, dungeons and notable items — rather than per-game item tables. For exhaustive Breath of the Wild compendium data you would need a game-specific source.

Why does the release date have a space at the start?

The values are free text imported from source material, and the leading space survived. Trim before parsing, and expect the format itself to vary between records rather than assuming one pattern.

What does the count field mean?

It is the number of records in the current page's `data` array, not the size of the collection. Page until `data` is empty rather than trying to compute a page count from it.

Tools that pair with this API

Zelda API (fanapis) is an independent third-party service and is not affiliated with ByteTools or ByteVancer. Details on this page were verified on 2026-08-21; always check the official documentation before relying on this API in production, as terms and limits can change.