Real external data makes a project feel like a product instead of an assignment. These APIs are free, no credit card, well-documented.
The five
- OpenWeather — current weather + forecasts. Project: farming advisory dashboard for Tamil Nadu districts (weather + crop calendar)
- TMDB — movies, posters, ratings. Project: regional cinema discovery app with watchlists (beats another Netflix clone by being Tamil-first)
- NewsAPI / GNews — headlines by topic. Project: news aggregator with category filters and saved articles
- ExchangeRate-API — live currency. Project: expense tracker for students planning MS abroad (₹ ↔ $ ↔ € budgets)
- data.gov.in — Indian government open data. Project: rainfall/crop/education dashboards — reviewers love social-impact framing and it's genuinely uncommon
What reviewers/interviewers look for
- Loading and error states (API down ≠ blank screen)
- Caching repeated calls (localStorage + timestamp — one line to mention, big maturity signal)
- API keys in environment variables, NOT committed to GitHub
Build one this weekend in the Playground — the Fetch API template is your starting point.