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A fake user API you can actually write to (randomuser.me alternative)

randomuser.me is a lovely tool, and this guide starts by saying so: for a one-off "give me a realistic person" call it's hard to beat — localized names in dozens of nationalities, photo headshots, per-request ?seed= determinism, even CSV/XML output. If that's all you need, keep using it.

The wall you eventually hit is that randomuser.me is a generator, not a backend. We verified all of this against the live API in July 2026:

• Read-only. POST and DELETE to the API return 404. You can't add the user your signup form just created, edit one, or remove one.
• No single-user endpoint. /api/5 is a 404 — there is no "user 5". Every response is a fresh batch of strangers (unless you pin ?seed=, and even then you can only page through the same shuffle).
• No filtering. ?city=Paris is silently ignored — you get random cities back. You can pick gender and nationality, and that's it.
• Fixed schema. You can inc=/exc= their fields but never add your own (role, plan, lastSeen…).
• It's a free, donation-run service — one of many in every tutorial's dependency list. Its old sibling uinames.com is already dead (expired TLS certificate, July 2026). When a demo dependency dies, your demo dies with it. We now track randomuser.me on our public status page, checked every 30 minutes.

So the moment your prototype needs "the user list plus sign-up, edit, delete, search" — the moment fake users need to behave like a users table — you want a different tool.

Option 0: keep your randomuser.me code, swap the host

If all you want is the same JSON without the third-party dependency, Mockbird serves a randomuser.me-compatible endpoint — same response shape (name.title, location.street.number, login.uuid, dob.date, picture.large…), same query params. Change the base URL and existing code keeps working:

- https://randomuser.me/api/?results=5&seed=demo
+ https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/randomuser/api/?results=5&seed=demo

results, seed, page, gender, nat, inc/exc and noinfo=1 all work, and the output is fully deterministic: the same seed + page returns identical users forever (results=10&page=1 is exactly pages 1+2 of results=5, like their seeded pagination):

curl 'https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/randomuser/api/?results=3&seed=demo&nat=us,gb&gender=female'
curl 'https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/randomuser/api/?inc=name,email,picture&noinfo=1'

Honest differences, stated plainly: names and cities come from an international pool (not localized per nat the way theirs are), the login.md5/sha1/sha256 fields are stable dummy hex of the right shape (not real digests), the pictures are deterministic SVG initials avatars served by us (not photographs), results cap at 100 per request (theirs allows 5,000), and output is JSON only. GET /m/randomuser lists everything the surface serves, including the /api/portraits/women/42.svg paths the picture URLs point at.

Try it in 10 seconds (no signup)

Mockbird's public demo has a seeded people collection right now:

curl 'https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/demo/customers?limit=3&select=firstName,lastName,email'
curl 'https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/demo/customers/1'          # a single person, by id
curl 'https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/demo/customers?_page=2&_limit=2'

Your own user API in two curls

curl -X POST https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/api/projects \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' -d '{"name":"user-api"}'
# → {"id":"abc123","adminKey":"KEY","baseUrl":"https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/abc123", ...}

curl -X POST https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/api/projects/abc123/resources \
  -H 'X-Admin-Key: KEY' -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -d '{"name":"users","template":"users","seed":25}'

That's 25 realistic users — names, emails, cities, join dates, and avatar URLs served by your own project (initials in a colored circle, generated SVG — no third-party image service to go down, and no real person's photograph standing in for "Jane User"):

curl 'https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/abc123/users?limit=1'
# [{ "id": 1,
#    "firstName": "Aria", "lastName": "Johnson",
#    "email": "aria.johnson88@example.com",
#    "avatar": "https://mockbird.mockbird.workers.dev/m/abc123/img/128x128?seed=aria9133&round=1&text=AJ",
#    "city": "Kyoto",
#    "createdAt": "2026-05-22T15:12:54.772Z" }]

Want different fields? Skip template and pass your own fields array — role, plan, isAdmin, whatever your UI needs (field types).

randomuser.me → Mockbird translation

That last row deserves a sentence: because your fake users are a real collection, the mock auth endpoints treat them as the user roster. POST /m/abc123/auth/login with {"email":"aria.johnson88@example.com","password":"anything"} returns a JWT plus that user's record; /auth/register inserts a new one. Your login screen, session handling and token-expiry logic all become testable against the same data your user list renders.

Also in the box

GraphQL over the same records ({ users(limit: 2, sortBy: "firstName") { id firstName email } }), named snapshots for deterministic tests, types.ts/Zod/OpenAPI/Postman exports, webhooks on writes, and db.json export so you can eject to json-server any time.

Honest comparison

Fair is fair: if you need a French user with a French address and a photo, use randomuser.me — we don't do localized identity generation, and their headshots look better in a demo than initials do. Use us when the user list has to act like part of your app instead of a slideshow of strangers.

What this is (and isn't): Mockbird is a mock-API/prototyping service, not a production user store — don't put real personal data in it. All seeded people are fake (names from a word list, emails on example.com). Projects are unlisted; anonymous creation has a per-IP daily cap — sign up (free) to keep projects tied to an account.

This page is written by the Mockbird maker — bias disclosed. randomuser.me behavior (writes 404, /api/5 404, ?city= ignored, inc/nat/seed/format working) verified with live requests in July 2026; uinames.com checked the same day.

Prefer a UI? The dashboard has a one-click /users starter on every new project. More guides: reqres.in alternative · mock JWT auth · placeholder images & avatars · FakerAPI alternative. Create your API →