Best Free APIs for Practice Projects, Including the Daraja Sandbox

If you are building for the Kenyan or East African market, these APIs should be your first practice targets. They are the same APIs you will use in production.

• Safaricom Daraja API (sandbox). The sandbox gives you a test environment for M-Pesa integration: STK Push, C2B, B2C, and transaction queries. You get test credentials, a simulated phone number, and callback URLs. No real money changes hands. This is the most portfolio-relevant API you can learn as a Kenyan developer. Register at developer.safaricom.co.ke.
• Africa's Talking sandbox. Provides test environments for SMS, USSD, Airtime, Voice, and IoT. The USSD simulator is particularly useful because it lets you build and test USSD menus without a real SIM card. You can build a complete USSD app (like a voting system or a balance checker) entirely in the sandbox. Sign up at africastalking.com.
• Paystack API (test mode). Paystack's test mode lets you simulate payments across multiple African countries. Test credit card payments, mobile money, and bank transfers with provided test cards. Useful for learning payment integration patterns. Register at paystack.com.
• Flutterwave API (test mode). Similar to Paystack, with test environments for card and mobile money payments across Africa. Both are worth learning since different employers use different providers.

These APIs require no authentication or only a simple API key. They are perfect for your first fetch() call.

• JSONPlaceholder (jsonplaceholder.typicode.com). A fake REST API with users, posts, comments, and todos. No signup required. Just hit the URL and get JSON back. Use it to practice CRUD operations: GET, POST, PUT, DELETE.
• PokeAPI (pokeapi.co). A free, open API with data on every Pokemon. No API key needed. Great for building a searchable catalog or practicing pagination.
• REST Countries (restcountries.com). Returns data about every country: name, population, flag, currencies, languages. Build a country explorer, a flag quiz, or a currency converter UI.
• Dog CEO API (dog.ceo/dog-api). Returns random dog images by breed. No auth needed. Simple enough for your very first API project. Display a random dog photo on button click. It takes 10 lines of code.

These APIs need an API key (free to get) and return real-world data you can build meaningful projects around.

• OpenWeatherMap (openweathermap.org). Free tier gives you current weather, 5-day forecasts, and geocoding. Build a weather dashboard, a travel planner, or an alert system. The free tier allows 60 calls per minute, which is more than enough for learning.
• News API (newsapi.org). Access headlines from major news sources worldwide. The free tier works for development and testing (it restricts production use). Build a news aggregator or a sentiment analysis dashboard.
• TMDB (themoviedb.org). Movie and TV show data, including posters, ratings, and cast information. The free API is generous. Build a movie search app, a recommendation engine, or a watchlist tracker.
• OpenLibrary API (openlibrary.org). Book data with no authentication required. Search by title, author, or ISBN. Build a book finder or a reading list app.

Do not just call an API and log the response. Build something complete. Here are concrete project ideas:

1. M-Pesa payment page. Use the Daraja sandbox to build a checkout page that triggers an STK Push and displays the payment status. This is interview-ready portfolio material in Kenya.
2. USSD app simulator. Use Africa's Talking to build a USSD menu system for something useful: a weather lookup, a bus schedule, or a savings tracker. USSD apps serve millions of Kenyans who do not use smartphones.
3. Weather dashboard. Use OpenWeatherMap to build a dashboard showing weather for Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, and Eldoret. Add a search bar for any city. Practice CSS grid layout and data fetching.
4. Movie explorer. Use TMDB to build a searchable movie catalog with filtering by genre, sorting by rating, and a detail page for each movie. Practice routing and state management.
5. Country comparison tool. Use REST Countries to let users pick two countries and compare population, area, languages, and currencies side by side.

A few habits to build early that will save you grief later:

• Never put API keys in your frontend code. Anyone can open the browser console and see them. Use environment variables and a backend proxy.
• Handle errors. APIs fail. The server might be down, the rate limit might be hit, or the data format might change. Always wrap your fetch calls in try/catch and show the user a meaningful error message.
• Read the docs before coding. Spend 15 minutes reading the API documentation. Understand the endpoints, authentication method, rate limits, and response format. This saves hours of trial and error.
• Use Postman or the VS Code REST Client to test endpoints. Before writing any frontend code, confirm the API returns what you expect by making requests manually.