Coffee API

Beginner's Pick Food & Drink / No Auth Required Beginner HTTPS
Free to Use
65 C
Measured Score 0 50 100 Speed 17/30 Consistency 20/20 Security 20/20 Browser access 0/15 Transparency 8/15 TESTED 2026-08-10

Overview

The Coffee API is a dead-simple, no-auth service that returns a random high-quality coffee photo every time you call it. You just hit one endpoint and receive a direct image URL, making it perfect for placeholder images, themed UI decorations, or a fun daily-photo feature. There are no published rate limits, but it is a hobby project so treat it gently.

Beginner Tip

Call the /random.json endpoint to get a URL string you can plug into an img tag, rather than streaming the image binary directly.

Measurement Record

What actually happened when we called this API from our own infrastructure. Every value below was recorded by the request, not copied from the provider's documentation.

Request
GET https://coffee.alexflipnote.dev/random.json
Result
HTTP 200 · application/json · 71 bytes · compressed
Response time
222 ms (median of 3) · fastest 214 ms
Transport
TLSv1.3 · TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 · certificate issued by Google Trust Services
Browser CORS
No Access-Control-Allow-Origin header — call it from a server, not the browser
Served by
cloudflare
Recorded
2026-08-10

Fields Returned

Top-level fields present in the response we captured, with the type and value we actually received.

Field Type Value received
file string (url) https://coffee.alexflipnote.dev/7Yn91EMWiV4_c…

Captured Response

Captured from a real request to https://coffee.alexflipnote.dev/random.json on 2026-08-10. Long arrays and nested objects are truncated to keep the shape readable.

JSON Response · Captured
{
  "file": "https://coffee.alexflipnote.dev/7Yn91EMWiV4_coffee.png"
}

Field Reference

file Direct HTTPS URL to a random coffee image that can be used in an img src attribute.

Implementation Example

Calls a real endpoint of this API. Replace any placeholder credentials with your own key.

Request
const url = "https://coffee.alexflipnote.dev/random.json";
const response = await fetch(url);
if (!response.ok) throw new Error(`Request failed: ${response.status}`);
const data = await response.json();
console.log(data);

What Can You Build?

Note: These code examples are AI-generated and unverified. Always refer to the official API documentation for accurate usage.

How This API Fails

We deliberately sent this API a broken request and recorded exactly what came back on 2026-08-10. Knowing the shape of an error before you hit it makes error handling much easier to write.

HTTP 404 Requesting a path that does not exist text/html

Returned an HTML error page rather than JSON — worth knowing if your client assumes every response can be parsed as JSON.

Common Errors & Troubleshooting

Generated guidance based on this API's documentation, not observed by us. Treat it as a starting point and check against the provider's own error reference.

Direct image URL returns 404 after a short time The image URLs returned are not permanently cached and may expire.
Fetch a fresh URL each time you need to display an image rather than storing old URLs.
CORS error when calling from the browser The API may not set CORS headers for all origins.
Use the image URL directly in an img src attribute, which is not subject to CORS restrictions.
Unexpected downtime This is a community-run hobby API with no uptime guarantee.
Add a fallback image URL in your code so your UI does not break if the API is temporarily unavailable.

Measured Score Breakdown

Live HTTP request to the API endpoint

Speed 17/30
Consistency 20/20
Security 20/20
Browser access 0/15
Transparency 8/15
Endpoint Response Time 222ms

Fully tested on Aug 10, 2026

Technical Specifications

Auth No Auth
HTTPS REQUIRED
CORS UNKNOWN
Category Food & Drink
Difficulty Beginner
Endpoint last called: 2026-08-10

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