JokeAPI is a free, open source REST API that delivers consistently formatted jokes in JSON, XML, YAML, or plain text. It exposes seven joke categories (Any, Misc, Programming, Dark, Pun, Spooky, Christmas), six blacklist content flags (nsfw, religious, political, racist, sexist, explicit), and filters for language, joke type, ID range, contains-text search, amount, and safe-mode. No sign-up is required and CORS is enabled. The service is rate-limited at 120 requests per minute per IP (5 per minute on submissions) and is maintained by Sv443 under the MIT license. The canonical source lives on Sv443's own Git server, with this GitHub repo kept open for issues and the community wrapper-library index.
JokeAPI is listed with 3 APIs on the APIs.io network: Jokes API, Metadata API, and System API. Tagged areas include Jokes, Humor, Entertainment, Open Source, and REST API.
The JokeAPI catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 2 Spectral governance rulesets.
JokeAPI’s developer surface includes engineering blog, documentation, GitHub presence, and 18 more developer resources.
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the
Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so
Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite.
If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your
provider repo — the
applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics applies to this provider. This API accepts writes, so it
carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from the published contracts
themselves: whether a caller can create-or-update in one call, whether the write accepts a key the caller already
holds, and whether the response says which branch ran. Without that, every write needs a search-and-branch in
front of it, and the first time that check is skipped a duplicate record is created.
Scored against the observed mean rather than raw — a provider at the catalog average is unchanged by this facet,
not penalised by it.
The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them,
because the conditional facet above carries the other
25. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped
maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal
weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):
MCP Server+12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Machine-Readable Auth+10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency+9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
A2A Agent Card+8 pts — a2a/-a2a.yml manifest, graded on conformance.grade against A2A 1.0.0
Delegated User Identity+6 pts — a served discovery document listing authorization_code in grant_types_supported (served), else an oauth2 authorizationCode flow or openIdConnect declared in an OpenAPI (documented)
7 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.
Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):
Standards this provider implements or carries. De facto ones are profiled and measured by the API Commons; formal ones come from the standards directory and are linked by the provider's own tags. The evidence column says how each claim was established — not that it was made.
Not yet checked against JokeAPI's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-29 from jokeapi.dev/; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.
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Kin Score
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