DEV Community

GoldBean
GoldBean

Posted on

67 Baidu AI Endpoints Behind a Single REST API â No Chinese Phone Needed

#ai #api #mcp #tutorial

If you've ever tried to use Baidu's AI APIs from outside China, you probably hit the same wall I did: you need a Chinese phone number to register. That's a non-starter for most developers.

So I built GoldBean — a single REST API that wraps 67 Baidu AI endpoints behind one URL. No Baidu account, no Chinese phone, no API key from Baidu. Just sign up, get credits, and call.

What's Inside

67 endpoints across 10 categories:

Category Count Examples
LLM Chat 3 ERNIE 4.0, DeepSeek Reasoning, DeepThink
OCR 19 General, Handwriting, QR Code, Bank Card, License, Stamp
Vision 10 Object, Plant, Animal, Dish, Currency, Car, Wine Recognition
NLP 9 Sentiment Analysis, Text Summary, Keyword Extraction
Image 4 AI Image Generation, Style Transfer
Voice 2 TTS (Text-to-Speech), ASR (Speech-to-Text)
Translation 1 Multi-language Translation
Video 2 Video Generation, Digital Human
Bio 1 HelixFold Protein Structure Prediction
Face/Body 4 Face Detection, Body Keypoints

Quick Start

1. Free Tier — No Signup Required 

curl https://api.goldbean.io/free/ocr/general \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"image":"https://example.com/receipt.jpg"}'
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

5 free calls per day per IP. No account, no API key, no credit card.

2. Paid Tier — Pay Per Call 

curl https://api.goldbean.io/paid/llm-chat \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Pricing starts at $0.002/1K tokens for LLM chat, $0.01/call for OCR.

3. MCP Server — For AI Agents 

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "goldbean": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "goldbean-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {
        "GOLDBEAN_API_KEY": "your-api-key-here"
      }
    }
  }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Works with Cursor, Claude Desktop, Cline, Codex, and Continue.

npx goldbean-mcp
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Payment Options

Method Minimum Use Case
PayPal $1 Credit/debit card, global
Alipay ¥1 WeChat Pay, bank card (China)
USDC on Base $0.01 x402 protocol, per-call crypto micropayment
Free tier $0 5 calls/day per IP, no signup

Membership Plans (v9.7.0)

Plan Price Premium Quota
Monthly $20/mo Resets monthly
Quarterly $60/qtr Resets monthly
Yearly $200/yr Resets monthly

Basic + Standard endpoints are unlimited on all plans. Only 8 Premium endpoints (high-cost models like video gen, protein folding) have monthly USD quotas.

Real-World Examples

OCR: Extract Text from a Receipt 

import requests

resp = requests.post(
    "https://api.goldbean.io/paid/ocr/receipt",
    headers={"Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_KEY"},
    json={"image": "https://example.com/receipt.jpg"}
)
print(resp.json()["words_result"])
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

LLM Chat: ERNIE 4.0 

const resp = await fetch("https://api.goldbean.io/paid/llm-chat", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: {
    "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_KEY",
    "Content-Type": "application/json"
  },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    messages: [{ role: "user", content: "Explain x402 protocol" }]
  })
});
const data = await resp.json();
console.log(data.choices[0].message.content);
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

TTS: Text-to-Speech 

curl https://api.goldbean.io/paid/tts \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"text":"Hello world","voice":"en-US"}' \
  --output audio.mp3
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Why Not Just Use Baidu Directly?

  1. No Chinese phone required — GoldBean handles Baidu registration
  2. Single API key — One key for all 67 endpoints, not 10+ separate API keys
  3. Global payments — PayPal and USDC, not just Chinese payment methods
  4. MCP compatible — Plug into any AI agent that supports MCP
  5. Unified billing — Pay-as-you-go or membership, all in one dashboard

Links

GoldBean lets developers worldwide use Baidu AI APIs without a Chinese phone number. Give it a try — the free tier needs no signup.

Top comments (0)