Anime · head-to-head
Jikan vs MyAnimeList
Jikan is a free, keyless wrapper around MyAnimeList's public web data, confirmed live at api.jikan.moe/v4 with a real anime lookup and a wide-open Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * header. It has no official affiliation with MAL and can lag behind it after a MAL outage, but it remains the most widely used way to query MAL data without OAuth.
MyAnimeList's official v2 REST API was reconfirmed live at api.myanimelist.net/v2 — an unauthenticated request returned a 403 from the real gateway rather than a network error, and a preflight OPTIONS carried no Access-Control-Allow-Origin header, so cors is corrected to no. It requires a registered OAuth 2 client, the same one the community 'Official MAL API' club (the entry's stored url) walks new developers through, and remains completely free to use.
| Jikan | MyAnimeList | |
|---|---|---|
| Authentication | None | OAuth |
| Pricing | free | free |
| Formats | JSON | JSON |
| CORS | yes | no |
| HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
Jikan needs no API key, while MyAnimeList requires OAuth — pick Jikan to start without signup.