About ReqRes
Built by a developer who got tired of rebuilding the same backend for every project.
The story
From side project to production infrastructure
ReqRes started in 2014 as a free fake API for testing. It was a side project built to solve a personal annoyance: every tutorial and test suite needed a real API to hit, and there wasn't a good free one.
It grew organically through developer tutorials, courses, and documentation. No marketing budget, no launch campaign. Developers found it, used it, and linked to it.
Over time it became clear that what developers actually needed wasn't a fake API. It was a real backend they didn't have to build. The same CRUD + auth pattern, over and over, for every new project.
The current version of ReqRes is that real backend: collections, auth, logs, and a database from a single URL. No servers, no deployment, no infrastructure to manage.
35 billion API requests served since launch.
Who built this
Ben Howdle is a two-time startup CTO with 15 years of experience building products for companies including Clerk, GoDaddy, Cisco, Soho House, and MyTheresa. He's been featured in Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. He currently runs ReqRes, writes The First CTO playbook, and operates from the UK.
Infrastructure
How ReqRes runs
Hosting & Data
ReqRes runs on Heroku in the US region, fronted by Cloudflare for global edge caching, DDoS protection, and performance. Data is stored in PostgreSQL with per-project isolation. Backups run daily.
Uptime
ReqRes has maintained consistent availability since 2014. Cloudflare provides always-on DDoS mitigation and global load balancing. Infrastructure is monitored around the clock with automated alerting.
Security
All traffic is routed through Cloudflare with TLS 1.3, WAF protection, and bot mitigation. API keys are hashed at rest. Project data is isolated per account. Auth tokens are signed and validated server-side.
Scale
ReqRes handles over 150 million requests per month across thousands of active projects.
Privacy
Your data belongs to you. ReqRes doesn't sell data, doesn't run analytics on your content, and doesn't share project data with third parties.
Contact
Questions, feedback, or something broken? Email [email protected].
I reply to every message.
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