How I Built 8 Data Tools From Free Government APIs — $0/month Hosting

Maestro — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 14:30:52 GMT

I built 8 free data tools from government APIs, deployed them for $0/month, and they serve over 25,000 pages.

The Tools

Tool	Data Source	Pages
Solar ROI Calculator	NREL PVWatts	519
Food Nutrition Comparisons	USDA FoodData Central	18,918
Internet Speed by Zip	FCC Broadband	687
NPS Campground Guide	NPS API	533
Wildfire Risk by Zip	USFS / NIFC	103
Salary by Job & City	BLS OEWS	606
Solar Panel Cost	NREL + EIA	396
EV Charging by City	OpenChargeMap	56

Stack

Astro — static site generation, zero JS by default
Cloudflare Pages — free hosting, unlimited bandwidth
Data — baked into JSON at build time, no runtime database

Every page is pre-built HTML. No API calls from the browser. Instant page loads.

Government APIs Used

NREL PVWatts: solar energy production, 1,000 req/hr free
BLS OEWS: salary data for 800+ occupations, bulk download
USDA FoodData Central: nutrition for 300,000+ foods
FCC Broadband: ISP coverage per census block
NPS API: campground amenities and fees

All free with just an API key.

Cost: $0/month

No database, no paid hosting, no paid APIs. Cloudflare Pages free tier handles everything.

Code Pattern

Each site follows the same structure: fetch data from API, transform to JSON, generate static pages with Astro, deploy to Cloudflare Pages. Shared template handles dark theme, navigation, schema markup.