Picture by Writer
# Introduction
You’ve most likely heard folks speak about APIs quite a bit. Mainly, an API permits a software program to ask one other piece of software program for assist. For instance, after we use our climate app, it’d use a real-time API to get the information from a distant server. This little dialog saves you from having to construct every part by yourself. On this article, we’re going to take a look at 5 APIs which might be really enjoyable and surprisingly straightforward to make use of. You’re going to get to discover AI fashions, internet information, serps, mannequin fine-tuning, and artificial information. Every of those APIs opens up alternatives to be taught, 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 giant language fashions, the most important 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 big language fashions that provides you entry to over 100 fashions from main suppliers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Mistral, Cohere, and plenty of open-source alternate 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, automated fallback if a mannequin is down, and routing primarily based on value, latency, or availability. Responses are available in a standardized format (textual content or picture assist), assist streaming by way of SSE, and all SDKs / shoppers suitable 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 most important challenges with utilizing LLMs are getting real-time information to make sure your data is updated and changing it right into a structured format that your mannequin can really use. And Olostep solves each of them. It’s a web-data API that means that you can scrape, crawl, and search nearly any publicly accessible web site and get the outcomes immediately within the format you need. You may feed reside search outcomes, information, or different on-line content material straight 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 website, /batches to course of 1000’s of URLs in parallel, and /solutions permitting “ask-the-web” model queries the place you get extracted solutions (with sources) relatively than uncooked HTML. The API additionally handles JavaScript-rendered pages, proxies, and anti-bot mechanisms routinely, 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 Pondering Machines Lab (launched October 2025) that goals to simplify fine-tuning and customized coaching of open-weight giant language fashions by supplying 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 may obtain the adapter/weights and use them exterior Tinker along with your most popular inference stack. It helps fashionable base fashions like Llama, Mistral, and GPT variants, with endpoints for fast LoRA/QLORA fine-tunes, multi-agent simulations, and data-centric tweaks corresponding 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 serps. It may well fetch natural outcomes, information, photos, procuring listings, maps, and knowledge-graph bins, and ship in a clear JSON (or optionally uncooked HTML). The API handles the complicated elements for you, together with fixing CAPTCHAs, rendering JavaScript, managing proxies, and mimicking actual consumer conduct, so that you get correct and up-to-date outcomes. You may management many parameters, together with search question, language, location, gadget 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 provides 250 searches monthly. Paid plans embody Developer at USD 75 for five,000 searches, Manufacturing at USD 150 for 15,000 searches, and Massive Information 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 reasonable, privacy-safe information 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 information whereas protecting personal data secure. After coaching, you may create as many new data as you want utilizing the API or the Python SDK. It really works with many information sorts, together with numbers, classes, textual content, time-series, geolocation, and multi-table datasets. You can even do conditional sampling, rebalance distributions, or fill in lacking values. The platform offers detailed studies so you may see how intently the artificial information matches the unique, together with distributions and correlations. You should use this information for sharing safely throughout groups, testing machine studying fashions, or operating experiments the place utilizing actual information is dangerous. It offers you sensible, versatile information you may belief for analytics, AI coaching, or analysis with out exposing delicate data.
# Wrapping Up
These 5 APIs present how a lot you are able to do with out constructing every part from scratch. OpenRouter makes working with a number of LLMs easy with one API key. Olostep offers you reside internet information and turns it right into a structured format your fashions can use. Tinker helps you to fine-tune and experiment with LLMs with out difficult setups. SerpApi makes real-time search straightforward and dependable, and MOSTLY AI Generator API helps you create reasonable, privacy-safe information for testing and experiments. Every one is highly effective, but in addition beginner-friendly sufficient to strive shortly.
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 beneath. 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 information science and the intersection of AI with medication. She co-authored the e book “Maximizing Productiveness with ChatGPT”. As a Google Era Scholar 2022 for APAC, she champions variety and tutorial excellence. She’s additionally acknowledged as a Teradata Range 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.
