Overview
FreeAPIHub publishes star ratings (0.0 – 5.0) and editorial verdicts on every API, model and tool we list. Ratings are a signal, not a verdict — they're recalculated monthly from objective uptime data, community feedback and a manual editor review.
This policy explains the inputs, the weights, and the rules that prevent paid promotion from skewing rankings.
How a star rating is calculated
Each rating is a weighted average of three inputs, capped at 5.0 and rounded to one decimal place:
Tie-breakers. When two listings have identical scores, the one with more recent activity (newest commits, last incident, last docs change) ranks higher.
Who can leave a review
- Anyone with a verified FreeAPIHub account that's at least 7 days old.
- One review per listing per account; you can edit your review once every 30 days.
- Reviews under 80 characters are held for moderation — we read every single one.
- API providers cannot review their own listings. Self-reviews are removed and the account is warned.
When ratings drop after an incident
An outage doesn't tank a listing instantly. Our uptime input is a 30-day median, so a single bad day moves a 4.8 to roughly a 4.7. Sustained outages (3+ days at less than 95% uptime) trigger a manual editor review and may pull the listing into the “Degraded” status on the homepage.
Providers can dispute incidents through the contact form. We will retract the rating change if the incident was caused by upstream infrastructure (e.g. AWS regional outage) clearly outside provider control.
Sponsored placements
Some surfaces on FreeAPIHub carry paid sponsorships. We follow strict rules so paid placements never blend with editorial:
- Sponsored cards display an amber left borderand an “Advertisement” tag in the corner.
- Sponsored placements never appear in the top-3 of a category sort — those slots are reserved for editorial winners.
- Star ratings on sponsored cards are calculated identically to organic listings. We do not boost paid placements.
- An API can be reviewed and rated regardless of whether it has paid for placement.
See our advertising disclosure for the full sponsor agreement.
Conflicts of interest
Every FreeAPIHub editor publicly discloses any stake they hold in an API provider (employment, equity, consulting). Editors recuse themselves from reviewing any provider where they have a stake.
The current disclosure register lives in our public GitHub repo. Anyone can file an issue if they suspect a conflict we missed.
Removing a review
We will remove a review if it:
- Contains personal attacks, slurs or doxxing.
- Was clearly written by the provider, a competitor, or an automated bot.
- Discusses a different product than the one being reviewed.
- Includes legally privileged content (NDAs, leaked credentials).
If you think your review was removed unfairly, write to editorial@freeapihub.com and an editor will re-review within 5 working days.
Contact
Editorial questions, conflict-of-interest tips, or appeals: editorial@freeapihub.com. We read every email.