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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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5 Free APIs That Replaced My Paid SaaS Subscriptions (Saving $847/year)

#discuss #api #python #productivity

Last year I was paying $847/year for SaaS tools that I replaced with free API calls.

Here's exactly what I dropped and what replaced each one:

1. Email Verification ($29/mo → Free)

Replaced: ZeroBounce ($29/month for 2,500 checks)
With: EmailRep.io API (free, no key needed)

import requests

email = "test@example.com"
resp = requests.get(f"https://emailrep.io/{email}")
data = resp.json()

print(f"Reputation: {data['reputation']}")
print(f"Suspicious: {data['suspicious']}")
print(f"Profiles found: {data['references']}")
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Limitation: 1,000 queries/day. But for my needs (checking leads before outreach), that's plenty.

2. Security Monitoring ($49/mo → Free)

Replaced: Snyk Pro ($49/month per project)
With: NVD API (free, no key) + GitHub Advisory Database

import requests

# Check any package for vulnerabilities
package = "log4j"
url = f"https://services.nvd.nist.gov/rest/json/cves/2.0?keywordSearch={package}"
resp = requests.get(url)
vulns = resp.json()["vulnerabilities"]

print(f"Found {len(vulns)} vulnerabilities for '{package}'")
for v in vulns[:3]:
    cve = v["cve"]
    print(f"  {cve['id']}: {cve['descriptions'][0]['value'][:80]}...")
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3. Academic Research Tools ($19/mo → Free)

Replaced: ResearchGate Premium ($19/month)
With: OpenAlex API + Semantic Scholar API (both free, no keys)

# Search 250M+ academic papers
resp = requests.get("https://api.openalex.org/works?search=machine+learning&per_page=5")
for work in resp.json()["results"]:
    print(f"{work['title'][:60]}")
    print(f"  Citations: {work['cited_by_count']}")
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OpenAlex alone gives you 250M+ papers, citations, author data, institution info — all for free. No rate limit issues.

4. Market Data Dashboard ($39/mo → Free)

Replaced: TradingView Pro ($39/month)
With: FRED API (free key, 120 req/min) for macroeconomic data

# Track any economic indicator
FRED_KEY = "your_free_key"

def get_indicator(series_id):
    url = f"https://api.stlouisfed.org/fred/series/observations"
    params = {"series_id": series_id, "api_key": FRED_KEY, 
              "file_type": "json", "sort_order": "desc", "limit": 1}
    return requests.get(url, params=params).json()["observations"][0]

for sid, name in [("GDP", "GDP"), ("UNRATE", "Unemployment"), ("CPIAUCSL", "CPI")]:
    obs = get_indicator(sid)
    print(f"{name}: {obs['value']} ({obs['date']})")
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I won't pretend this replaces TradingView's charts — but for the data I actually needed (macro indicators for reports), FRED is strictly better.

5. DNS/SSL Monitoring ($12/mo → Free)

Replaced: SSLMate ($12/month)
With: crt.sh API (free, no key)

# Find all SSL certificates for any domain
domain = "example.com"
resp = requests.get(f"https://crt.sh/?q={domain}&output=json")
certs = resp.json()

print(f"Found {len(certs)} certificates for {domain}")
for cert in certs[:5]:
    print(f"  {cert['common_name']} — expires {cert['not_after']}")
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Total Savings

Tool Was Paying Now Paying
Email verification $29/mo $0
Security monitoring $49/mo $0
Research tools $19/mo $0
Market data $39/mo $0
SSL monitoring $12/mo $0
Total $148/mo ($1,776/yr) $0

Ok, I'm being honest — some of the SaaS tools have features I can't replicate with APIs alone (TradingView charts, Snyk's CI integration). But for my specific use cases, the free APIs covered 100% of what I was actually using.

My Question

What SaaS tools have you replaced with free APIs? Or conversely — what's a SaaS tool you'll never replace because the API alternative is too much work?

I've been cataloging free APIs (121+ tools on GitHub) and I keep finding more that could replace paid tools. But I'm curious what others have found.

Part of my Free APIs You Didn't Know About series.

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