Ready CSVs are convenient, but the real skill is pulling fresh, messy data yourself. Start with the ones that need no key.
Ready-made CSVs are comfy, but the real skill is pulling fresh, still-messy data yourself — just like on the job. Start with the ones that need no key, and don't chase the 'correct' API — grab the one whose topic you actually care about.
A giant catalog of free APIs by category — weather, finance, sport, games, animals — each tagged with auth and rate limits. Your first stop for 'is there even an API for X?'. There's also a hand-picked set of 10 APIs aimed at data engineering, with a ready pipeline example.
Everything Pokémon: stats, types, evolutions, and the links between them. The perfect first-ever API — no signup, clean structure, plenty to cut your teeth on with JSON and requests.
A reference on every country: population, area, currencies, languages, borders. Pairs beautifully with other data — enrich your dataset by country and build maps.
Repo activity: commits, stars, issues, releases. Dig into open-source popularity and tech trends on the repos you actually love.
Tracks, artists, playlists, and audio features — danceability, energy, tempo, mood. Pull your own playlists and take your own taste apart piece by piece.
Current weather and forecasts worldwide. A classic when you want to cross weather with something else — flight delays, sales, how active people are.
A database of news events from all over the world, with sentiment scoring and live translation. The scale is enormous — for ambitious projects on global trends and tone.
Advanced stuff — save it for later, but these are the projects that make you stand out. Data flowing right now, plus event generators so you can build pipelines like a real product's.
A curated list of live feeds: transit, seismic, aviation, crypto, IoT sensors, threat intelligence. Plus synthetic generators that push events straight into Kafka. The easiest place to find a live source for whatever you're into.
A live stream of Wikipedia edits. The gentlest 'first stream' there is: connect and instantly watch events fly by. Perfect for grasping how real-time actually works.
A live feed of earthquakes worldwide: time, place, magnitude, depth. Constantly refreshed — great for real-time maps and simple alerts.
EventSim fakes a music service's event stream (think Spotify), while Lenses Datagen publishes ready datasets into Kafka — ship positions, taxi rides, IoT. You control the volume, so you can build a product pipeline without a real product.