Practical tutorials for getting real work done with mock APIs. Everything here works on the free tier, no signup required to start.
We check 15 well-known public mock, fake-data and placeholder-image APIs with a plain GET every 30 minutes — exactly what a tutorial curl sees. Live state, 24h/7d OK-rates, and a free alternative for each.
Point Claude Code, Cursor, or VS Code at one URL and your agent gets eight tools that create and drive live mock REST APIs: seeded projects, OpenAPI import, record CRUD, custom routes, snapshots. No signup, no OAuth — and the mock stays plain HTTP, so the code your agent writes ships with a working URL.
Beeceptor's free plan: 50 requests/day, 3 mock rules, 10 stored CRUD objects, endpoints expire after 7–90 days. Mockbird: 10,000 requests/day, 20 custom routes, 1,000 records per resource, no expiry — free, no signup, one curl.
via.placeholder.com, placehold.it, placekitten and placeimg are all dead (verified July 2026). Get deterministic SVG placeholders and initial-avatars from the same base URL as your mock API — seeded data ships with images that render. Free, no signup.
Get everything you love about json-server — filters, sorting, pagination, relations, nested routes — as a zero-install hosted URL you can share with teammates and deploy previews.
Build against a realistic users API before the backend exists: fetch, useEffect, pagination, search, and swapping to the real API later with one env variable.
A reusable Vue 3 composable against a realistic users API: watchEffect with abort-on-cleanup, pagination, search, and swapping to the real API later with one env variable.
Skeleton screens, race conditions, error boundaries, 401 redirects, retry logic — exercised for real with ?mock_delay and ?mock_status, right from the address bar or your E2E suite.
Every project is a hosted GraphQL endpoint too: typed schema from your resources, relations, filters, mutations, full introspection, and a built-in GraphiQL IDE. Same data as REST.
Any email + password returns a real signed JWT that verifies and expires. Test login forms, 401 interceptors, token expiry, and protected-mode 401s — wired to your mock users data.
One click gives you products, customers, orders and reviews — linked with real foreign keys, joinable with ?_expand and ?_embed. Perfect for portfolio projects and UI demos.
Fire real HMAC-SHA256-signed created/updated/deleted events at your endpoint on demand, verify signatures in Node or Python, and debug deliveries with the built-in log.
Post your OpenAPI/Swagger spec (JSON or YAML), get a hosted, stateful mock with schema-aware fake data — enums kept, $refs resolved. Prism without the Node CLI.
Reset your mock API to a known state between tests with named data snapshots — one HTTP call restores every record, exactly. Baseline, empty-state, and bug-repro fixtures without truncate scripts or containers.
Define your own endpoints (any method, any path) with responses that echo query, params, headers and body. 10,000 requests/day free — a Beeceptor alternative without the 50/day cap. Try it with one curl.
Catch any HTTP request with a catch-all /* route, inspect headers (signatures included) and bodies live, and reply with any status or a templated body. 10,000 requests/day free, no 7-day URL expiry.
httpbin.org is chronically overloaded. Echo any request, force any status with ?mock_status=, add delays, mint UUIDs with template routes, and inspect request headers — 10,000 requests/day free, try it on the demo with one curl.
POST a CSV/TSV and every row becomes a typed record behind a live API: filters, pagination, search, CRUD, GraphQL, TypeScript types. A developer-friendly SheetDB / Sheety / sheet2api alternative — 10,000 requests/day free vs their few hundred per month.
Mocky is gone: every run.mocky.io URL now 404s behind a broken certificate. Design any static response (body, status, headers, content-type, delay) and get a permanent URL in one curl — plus templating and full CRUD mocky never had.
Reqres now 401s every request without an x-api-key header. Get the same paginated users + login/register endpoints keyless and free — with real signed tokens, configurable expiry, and registered users that actually persist.
Love JSONPlaceholder but need your own resources, realistic data, or a POST that actually sticks? Same conventions (_page, nested routes, _expand), your schema, plus GraphQL and mock auth. Free, no signup.
DummyJSON's data is rich but fixed, and writes are simulated. Same sortBy/order params, search, delay/error simulation, and JWT auth — on your resources, with POST/PUT/DELETE that actually stick. Free, no signup.
FakeStoreAPI's POST returns an id that fetches back as an empty 200, and filters are silently ignored. Get a store (or any schema) where creates, updates, deletes, filters, and register all really work. Free, no signup.
Postman's free mock servers cap at 1,000 calls/month and replay static examples. Get a stateful mock API free — then import it back into Postman as a ready-made collection with one link (/postman.json).
MSW only exists inside your JavaScript process: curl, Postman, mobile apps, backends, and teammates can't hit it. Get a hosted, stateful mock API on a real URL — no handler code, no signup. Honest notes on where MSW still wins (spoiler: JS unit tests — keep it there).
Mirage pioneered "build the frontend before the backend" — but the last miragejs npm release was October 2023, ember-cli-mirage breaks under Vite, and the mock only exists inside your JS bundle. Get a stateful mock API on a real URL: seeded data, relations, error injection — no server file to maintain, no signup.
Mockoon's desktop app is excellent — on localhost. Sharing the mock means Mockoon Cloud (from $100/month, no free tier) or self-hosting the CLI. Get a hosted, stateful, seeded mock REST API in one curl — free, no signup, 10k requests/day. Import your Mockoon environment via OpenAPI export.
WireMock Cloud's free tier: 1,000 calls/month, 3 mock APIs, 10 req/s — with stateful mocking, chaos testing, mock auth, and even stub export locked behind Enterprise. Get all of that free with 10,000 requests/day. (WireMock OSS in Java tests? Keep it — honest notes inside.)
mockapi.io's free plan stops at 1 project, 4 resources, 100 records, behind a GitHub/Google OAuth wall. Same query params (page, limit, sortBy, order, search) with 5× the room — plus error simulation, request inspector, GraphQL, and exports it doesn't have at any price.
mockapi.io vs Beeceptor vs JSONPlaceholder vs json-server vs Mockbird — an honest look at free-tier limits, persistence, CRUD, request inspection, and when each is the right pick.