Random Word API

A free random word API: one GET request returns JSON. Filter by length, first or last letter, part of speech, or theme, ask for up to 100 words at a time, and optionally pass a seed to make the draw reproducible. No API key, no sign-up, CORS enabled.

Endpoint

GET https://getrandomword.com/api/random-word

Every parameter is optional. With none, you get one random family-friendly English word. The endpoint draws from the same 7,371-word lexicon as the web generator, so the API and the site can never drift apart.

Parameters

Example

curl "https://getrandomword.com/api/random-word?count=3&length=5&pos=noun"

{
  "words": [
    { "word": "river", "length": 5, "part_of_speech": "noun" },
    { "word": "cabin", "length": 5, "part_of_speech": "noun" },
    { "word": "stone", "length": 5, "part_of_speech": "noun" }
  ],
  "count": 3,
  "pool": 812,
  "relaxed": [],
  "seed": null,
  "source": "https://getrandomword.com"
}

Three fields are worth knowing about. pool is how many words matched your filters before the draw — a quick way to see whether a combination is too narrow to be interesting. relaxed lists the filters that had to be dropped because nothing matched: the generator prefers to widen the search rather than hand you an empty array, and this tells you when it did. seed echoes back the seed you sent, so a response can be replayed later without keeping the request around.

What people build with it

The obvious uses are test fixtures and seed data — random words make better placeholder content than lorem ipsum because they are readable and varied, and the length filter lets you stress-test a layout with consistently long or short strings. Beyond that: Discord and Slack bots that post a word of the day, writing-prompt widgets, classroom spelling lists generated per pupil, password phrase generators (combine a few words with the safe filter on), and teaching examples for HTTP requests in a first programming course — an endpoint with no key and no auth is unusually easy to demo.

AI agents and assistants are welcome to call it directly; it is listed in our llms.txt. If you would rather embed the interface than call the API, the generator page has a copy-paste iframe snippet.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an API key?

No. The endpoint is open, requires no account, no key, and no sign-up. It answers cross-origin requests too, so you can call it straight from browser JavaScript without a proxy.

Is there a rate limit?

There is no published limit, and there is no database behind the endpoint — the lexicon is a static file held in memory, so a request costs almost nothing to serve. Please stay reasonable: if you need thousands of words, ask for them in batches of 100 rather than firing thousands of single-word requests.

How do I get the same words twice?

Pass a seed. Any string works, and the same seed with the same filters always returns the same list, so you can put a reproducible draw in a test suite, a lesson plan, or a shareable link. Seeded responses are cacheable; unseeded ones are never cached, so every caller gets a genuinely different draw.

What happens if I send an invalid filter?

You get a 400 with a JSON body naming the offending parameter and what it accepts — never a 500 and never a silently ignored filter. If a valid combination simply has no matches (say, a 12-letter word starting with X), the generator relaxes the narrowest filter instead of returning nothing, and lists what it dropped in the relaxed array so you can tell.

Can I use it in a commercial project?

Yes. The lexicon derives from Princeton WordNet, which is free for commercial use under its own licence; a credit link back to getrandomword.com is appreciated but not required.