Dictionaries · head-to-head
Chinese Character Web vs Collins
The Chinese Character Web API (CCDB) is a free, read-only JSON API built on the Unicode Consortium's Unihan Database, covering Mandarin and Cantonese readings, Japanese on'yomi/kun'yomi, radicals, stroke counts, definitions, and simplified/traditional variant mappings for CJK Unified Ideographs, filterable by character-set encodings like GB2312, Big5, and Shift JIS. A live GET against /version returned a real 200 JSON body and Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * on the same Apache-served host.
Collins' REST API serves the publisher's monolingual English and bilingual dictionary, thesaurus, translation and audio-pronunciation data used on collinsdictionary.com, with separate JSON and XML response representations for each resource. A live unauthenticated request against the real gateway returned a genuine application-level "NoAccessKey" 403 rather than a Cloudflare challenge, confirming the API Key requirement and that the service itself is fully live. Its own pricing page grants up to 5,000 calls/month free before metered tiers (from £50/month) kick in at higher volumes.
| Chinese Character Web | Collins | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | API Key |
| Pricing | free | freemium |
| Formats | JSON | JSON, XML |
| CORS | yes | no |
| HTTPS | No | Yes |
Chinese Character Web needs no API key, while Collins requires API Key — pick Chinese Character Web to start without signup.