# ApiMocker

what it does

ApiMocker is a free fake rest api for app builders, tutorials, examples, tests, and API clients. It gives you realistic users, posts, todos, and comments with the behavior most demos need:

• real reads and writes against the public dataset
• pagination, filtering, sorting, and text search
• relationship routes like users to posts and posts to comments
• error endpoints and delay controls for loading and failure states
• daily resets so public writes stay useful without leaving permanent mess
• docs and examples at apimocker.com

The free API is meant to stay free and account-free. The product direction is persistent isolated environments for people who need private mock data, higher limits, stable credentials, and reset controls.

why i built it

Every app tutorial eventually needs an API. Most of the time the choice is either a throwaway local server, a giant backend setup, or a public fake API that does not behave much like a real one.

ApiMocker is the version I wanted for teaching and prototyping: simple enough to use in a curl command, but realistic enough to test search, pagination, write flows, and error handling.

how it’s built

a quick tour:

• Astro product site: homepage, docs, examples, and room for future playground/dashboard surfaces
• Express API: resource routes, search, filtering, writes, rate limits, and health checks
• Prisma + PostgreSQL: deterministic seeded data and future isolated environment models
• pnpm monorepo: separate apps/web and apps/api services with shared root scripts
• Railway services: one service for the web app and one for the API, with reset scheduling separated from request handling
• OpenAPI/docs path: the free API contract is documented publicly so the tool works as a reference, not just a URL dump

what’s next

The free API is the stable base. The next product layer is private isolated environments: owned datasets, reset controls, usage visibility, credentials, and eventually billing. Until that is real, the public site keeps the line clear between what exists today and what is still being built.

the point is not to replace your backend. it is to remove the fake-api chore from everything else you are trying to build.