How the World's Biggest Public API Lists Are Actually Maintained
A behind-the-scenes look at how open-source communities like public-apis/public-apis curate, verify and keep thousands of free APIs alive.
Ever wonder how directories like the famous public-apis/public-apis GitHub repository (100k+ stars) stay accurate with thousands of listed endpoints?
Community pull requests
Anyone can submit a PR adding a new API. Maintainers run automated GitHub Actions that lint the markdown table format, check for duplicate entries, and validate that HTTPS/CORS metadata fields exist.
Automated uptime checks
Several forks run scheduled crawlers that periodically request each documented base URL and flag endpoints returning persistent 4xx/5xx errors so the community can prune or fix them.
Category taxonomy
APIs are tagged into stable categories (Anime, Games & Comics, Weather, Finance, Machine Learning...) which is exactly the taxonomy DevZar mirrors and expands for its own directory — grouping by real developer intent instead of marketing buzzwords.
Why this matters for DevZar
Our own content pipeline is intentionally structured the same way: every API entry stores its real base URL, docs link, authentication type and CORS support, sourced from open community lists — never fabricated review scores or usage numbers.