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# Introduction
You’ve most likely heard folks discuss APIs rather a lot. Principally, an API permits a software program to ask one other piece of software program for assist. For instance, once we use our climate app, it would use a real-time API to get the information from a distant server. This little dialog saves you from having to construct all the things by yourself. On this article, we’re going to have a look at 5 APIs which are truly enjoyable and surprisingly straightforward to make use of. You’ll get to discover AI fashions, internet knowledge, search engines like google, mannequin fine-tuning, and artificial knowledge. Every of those APIs opens up alternatives to study, experiment, and construct small tasks and not using a heavy setup. So, let’s get began.
# 1. OpenRouter
After I was engaged on my analysis paper and wanted to name a number of massive language fashions, the largest headache for me was to maintain observe of all of the totally different API keys. I actually wished there was of accessing all of them directly (precisely the issue OpenRouter solves). It’s a unified unified API gateway for giant language fashions that offers you entry to over 100 fashions from main suppliers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, and plenty of open-source options. So, you solely want one API key and one integration, and you’ll change between fashions just by altering a parameter. It additionally handles good supplier routing, computerized fallback if a mannequin is down, and routing based mostly on value, latency, or availability. Responses are available in a standardized format (textual content or picture help), help streaming through SSE, and all SDKs / shoppers appropriate with OpenAI APIs (Python, JS, and so on.) work out-of-the-box with OpenRouter. Pricing is pay-as-you-go with no minimums, beginning at fractions of a cent per token, and there’s a free tier for testing.
# 2. Olostep
I personally imagine that two of the largest challenges with utilizing LLMs are getting real-time knowledge to make sure your info is updated and changing it right into a structured format that your mannequin can truly use. And Olostep solves each of them. It’s a web-data API that permits you to scrape, crawl, and search virtually any publicly accessible web site and get the outcomes immediately within the format you need. You may feed dwell search outcomes, information, or different on-line content material immediately into your software. Olostep additionally takes care of structuring the information. It helps a number of endpoints, e.g.,/scrapes for particular person URLs, /crawls to recursively observe hyperlinks throughout a web site, /batches to course of hundreds of URLs in parallel, and /solutions permitting “ask-the-web” type queries the place you get extracted solutions (with sources) somewhat than uncooked HTML. The API additionally handles JavaScript-rendered pages, proxies, and anti-bot mechanisms mechanically, making it dependable even for complicated web sites. Pricing begins free (500 requests), with paid tiers from USD 9/month (5k requests) to USD 399/month (1M requests), plus credit score packs for flexibility.
# 3. Tinker API
Tinker API a brand new API from Considering Machines Lab (launched October 2025) that goals to simplify fine-tuning and customized coaching of open-weight massive language fashions by providing you with full management over the coaching loop i.e forward_backward, optim_step, pattern, save_state and so on. As soon as coaching is completed, you possibly can obtain the adapter/weights and use them outdoors Tinker along with your most well-liked inference stack. It helps in style base fashions like Llama, Mistral, and GPT variants, with endpoints for fast LoRA/QLORA fine-tunes, multi-agent simulations, and data-centric tweaks akin to artificial augmentation or bias mitigation. It additionally consists of sandbox-like interface for prototyping in minutes. Tinker is at the moment in personal beta with a free tier for small experiments (e.g., <1B params), and it’s already being utilized by analysis teams at universities like Princeton, Stanford, and UC Berkeley. Scaling to pay-per-compute-hour fashions beginning at USD 0.50/hour for mid-tier GPUs.
# 4. SerpApi
SerpApi is a real-time internet search API that makes it straightforward to get structured search outcomes from Google and different search engines like google. It could actually fetch natural outcomes, information, photos, procuring listings, maps, and knowledge-graph containers, and ship in a clear JSON (or optionally uncooked HTML). The API handles the complicated components for you, together with fixing CAPTCHAs, rendering JavaScript, managing proxies, and mimicking actual person conduct, so that you get correct and up-to-date outcomes. You may management many parameters, together with search question, language, location, machine sort, search sort, pagination, and output format. This makes it straightforward to fine-tune the information you obtain. Pricing begins with a free tier that offers 250 searches monthly. Paid plans embody Developer at USD 75 for five,000 searches, Manufacturing at USD 150 for 15,000 searches, and Large Knowledge at USD 275 for 30,000 searches. All plans are month-to-month, with 99.95% uptime for paid choices and customized high-volume plans accessible.
# 5. MOSTLY AI Generator API
MOSTLY AI Generator API helps you create life like, privacy-safe knowledge out of your actual datasets. You begin by coaching a generator in your tables, CSVs, or databases. The generator learns patterns, correlations, and relationships in your knowledge whereas conserving personal info protected. After coaching, you possibly can create as many new data as you want utilizing the API or the Python SDK. It really works with many knowledge sorts, together with numbers, classes, textual content, time-series, geolocation, and multi-table datasets. You may as well do conditional sampling, rebalance distributions, or fill in lacking values. The platform provides detailed studies so you possibly can see how intently the artificial knowledge matches the unique, together with distributions and correlations. You should use this knowledge for sharing safely throughout groups, testing machine studying fashions, or working experiments the place utilizing actual knowledge is dangerous. It provides you sensible, versatile knowledge you possibly can belief for analytics, AI coaching, or analysis with out exposing delicate info.
# Wrapping Up
These 5 APIs present how a lot you are able to do with out constructing all the things from scratch. OpenRouter makes working with a number of LLMs easy with one API key. Olostep provides you reside internet knowledge and turns it right into a structured format your fashions can use. Tinker enables you to fine-tune and experiment with LLMs with out sophisticated setups. SerpApi makes real-time search straightforward and dependable, and MOSTLY AI Generator API helps you create life like, privacy-safe knowledge for testing and experiments. Every one is highly effective, but additionally beginner-friendly sufficient to strive rapidly.
Which APIs do you want essentially the most? Have you ever tried any of those, or do you utilize others? Share your favorites within the feedback under. I’d like to see what you’re working with 🙂
Kanwal Mehreen is a machine studying engineer and a technical author with a profound ardour for knowledge science and the intersection of AI with drugs. She co-authored the e book “Maximizing Productiveness with ChatGPT”. As a Google Era Scholar 2022 for APAC, she champions variety and educational excellence. She’s additionally acknowledged as a Teradata Variety in Tech Scholar, Mitacs Globalink Analysis Scholar, and Harvard WeCode Scholar. Kanwal is an ardent advocate for change, having based FEMCodes to empower girls in STEM fields.
