4chan vs Open Collective

4chan's API serves the same read-only board and thread data every page renders — board lists, catalogs, threads, and posts — as plain JSON from the dedicated a.4cdn.org host, with no registration, key, or authentication of any kind required. Media referenced by posts is served from the sibling i.4cdn.org host, and the project's own GitHub repository (4chan/4chan-API) hosts the reference client and doubles as the canonical documentation, including the rule to cap requests at one per second. Cross-origin use from a browser is limited in practice: both the docs and a live probe confirm the API's CORS policy only allows requests originating from 4chan's own board pages, so a third-party site must proxy requests server-side rather than call it directly from client-side JavaScript.

Open Collective's GraphQL API (v2) queries collectives, expenses, transactions, and members for the platform's transparent nonprofit/open-source funding model, and public collective data is readable with no authentication at all. Its own docs flag the older REST API as still running but no longer developed, pointing new integrations at the GraphQL surface and a companion PDF service (for receipts and invoices) that accepts either a personal token or an OAuth bearer token. A personal access token, not a full OAuth app-review flow, is the documented way to authenticate for private or write access.