countries.dev

  • What: free country and city facts API built on GeoNames data. https://countries.dev/
  • Base URL: https://countries.dev (/name/<country>, /cities?q=<city>)
  • Auth: none; no per-key quotas. Stated as free for production use.
  • Called from: assets/js/travel-about.js, in the visitor’s browser.
  • Triggers: opening the About panel of a travel page; one country request per card plus city lookups for time zones.
  • Caching: none beyond the browser’s HTTP cache.
  • Failure: the card falls back to the trip’s own “Good to know” info from _data/travels/about/.
  • Licence: GeoNames data is CC BY 4.0, credited in _includes/travel-credits.html.
  • Quirks: the city search parameter is q, not name; city names collide across countries, and some small towns are missing (the code has an IANA-zone override for those).