shipapis
StarSubmit an APISubmit API

Zen Quotes

Inspirational quotes as JSON, including a daily pick

😄 FunHEALTHYchecked 54 min ago
AUTH NONECORS ✗AGENT ✓HTTPS ✓COMMERCIAL ?

Zen Quotes serves a large collection of inspirational quotes through a simple keyless API. Grab a random quote, the quote of the day, or a batch, each with author and a ready-made HTML blockquote. The free tier is rate-limited and asks for an attribution link when used publicly.

74HOW IT'S SCORED ⓘ
Docs ↗
Status badge · for your READMEshipapis health badge: 74 · healthy
Uptime history
90.2%90 days
86.7%30 days
1657P50 · ms
4714P95 · ms
operationalpartialdownno data
Response time · last 48 checks
Fastest 238 ms, slowest 3582 ms, most recent 1306 ms.
Live response samplecaptured by our last successful check
GET https://zenquotes.io/api/today

[
  {
    "q": "One of the advantages of being disorganized is that one is always having surprising discoveries.",
    "a": "A.A. Milne",
    "date": "2026-07-05"
  }
]
Call itcurl · fetch · python
curl "https://zenquotes.io/api/today"
const res = await fetch("https://zenquotes.io/api/today");
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data);
import requests

res = requests.get("https://zenquotes.io/api/today")
print(res.json())

BROWSER CALLS BLOCKED (NO CORS/HTTPS) — USE THE CURL SNIPPET

Endpoints · 6HealthyFULL DOCS ↗
Monitored path responding — GET /today1657 mschecked 54 min ago
GET/todayPROBED

Inspirational quotes as JSON, including a daily pick

GET/today?limit=5

Paginated variant with limit parameter.

GET/[mode

[Mode — documented GET route.

GET/quotes

Quote collection.

GET/random

Random item from the collection.

GET/image

Image — documented GET route.

Machine-readable spec

We probe a documented GET and expect 2xx JSON — full uptime and health score. Export includes every documented route below.

Response-shape history

Stable. No schema drift observed since monitoring began — the response shape has not changed under our checks.

Zen Quotes: common questions

Is Zen Quotes free to use?

Yes — Zen Quotes is a free fun API. Free tier: Free — no key. Whether the free tier allows commercial use is unclear — check the provider docs.

Does Zen Quotes need an API key?

No — Zen Quotes needs no API key or signup. You can call it straight away; rate limits still apply (Rate-limited on the free tier (see zenquotes.io)).

Can I call Zen Quotes from the browser?

Not directly — Zen Quotes doesn't send browser-friendly CORS headers, so call it from a server or proxy instead. Copy the curl or Python snippet on this page to get started.

Is Zen Quotes up right now?

As of our last scheduled check, Zen Quotes is healthy with 90.2% uptime over 90 days and a 1657 ms median response. We re-probe it every sweep — the status badge and uptime chart above always show the latest.