Dictionaries · head-to-head
Collins vs Wiktionary
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.
Wiktionary exposes its full multilingual dictionary — definitions, etymologies, pronunciations, and translations spanning thousands of languages — through the same MediaWiki Action API that powers Wikipedia, with no key required for read access. Cross-origin browser requests need the documented origin=* query parameter rather than a bare Origin header, since that's what actually unlocks the API's CORS headers.
| Collins | Wiktionary | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | API Key | None |
| Pricing | freemium | free |
| Formats | JSON, XML | JSON, XML |
| CORS | no | yes |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
Wiktionary needs no API key, while Collins requires API Key — pick Wiktionary to start without signup.