Production-grade web scraping & AI research, written by someone who ships it.
I'm Aleksei. I build Apify actors and write code-heavy tutorials about web scraping, data extraction, and AI workflows. Every article includes runnable Python and real benchmarks. Currently 31 published actors (78 total in portfolio) with real users.
Recent posts
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16 Keyless Game APIs, 5 Incompatible Ways to Say "Empty"
Sixteen free game and gaming APIs that need no key and no signup (Scryfall, PokeAPI, Deck of Cards, Open Trivia DB, FreeToGame, CheapShark, dnd5eapi, Open5e, MTG.io, PokemonTCG, Guild Wars 2, Speedrun.com, mcsrvstat, Jikan, Valorant-API, Steam appdetails), each verified with a live curl on July 19, 2026. Then the part that matters: I asked all sixteen for something that does not exist, and got five incompatible dialects of nothing. Seven answered HTTP 200 with a body carrying no result, which a res.ok wrapper passes downstream as data. Two served a 404 whose body is text/plain Not Found, which breaks any code that parses before it checks. One returned 200 with ip 127.0.0.1 for a host that does not exist. One disagreed with itself: HTTP 404 outside, status 0 inside.
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Free Sports APIs: I Curl-Tested 15, 8 Need No Key
Eight free sports and score APIs that need no key and no signup (MLB StatsAPI, NHL, ESPN, OpenLigaDB, Jolpica-F1, Chess.com, Lichess, Fantasy Premier League), each re-verified with a live curl on July 19, 2026, each with its real response and one gotcha. Plus the trap underneath the list: on MLB StatsAPI the score field does not arrive as null or zero on games that have not been played, it usually disappears entirely, so a schema you inferred from a finished game raises KeyError on tomorrow's slate. The obvious guard fails too, because postponed and cancelled games both report abstractGameState Final with no score key at all, and 23 of the 94 games in my ten-day window landed on the wrong calendar day when I sliced gameDate instead of reading officialDate. HTTP 200 the whole time.
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Your Dictionary API 404s on Real Words. Here Are 9 Keyless.
Nine free dictionary, word and language APIs that need no key and no signup (Free Dictionary API, FreeDictionaryAPI, Datamuse, Urban Dictionary, RhymeBrain, Random Word API, LanguageTool, MyMemory, PoetryDB), each re-verified with a live curl on July 18, 2026, each with its real response and one gotcha. Plus the trap underneath the list: on a keyless dictionary API a 404 means 'not in my frozen wordlist', not 'not a word', so the same word returns 404 on one host and a real definition on another, and a confidence field of match:1 can sit on a wrong translation. HTTP status and a vendor confidence score are not facts about the word.
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15 Keyless Transit APIs, and a Timestamp Their Own Docs Get Wrong
Fifteen transit, flight-tracking, bike-share and routing APIs that need no key and no signup (OpenSky, adsb.fi, adsb.lol, airplanes.live, hexdb, Citybikes, GBFS, MBTA, TfL, Amtraker, opendata.ch, iRail, Wienerlinien, OSRM, Transitous), each re-verified with a live curl on July 17, 2026, each with its real response and one gotcha. Plus the trap underneath the list: every ADS-B provider here calls its timestamp now, every one of them sends milliseconds, one of them documents seconds, and a plain arithmetic freshness check reads the result as data from the year 58510.
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