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When the backend is still weeks away, frontend work does not have to stop. I built Mockly to turn JSON collections into hosted fake REST endpoints, so I could keep building against HTTP requests while the production API was unavailable.
The idea began with a familiar question: “What do you do for those couple of weeks?” How hard could it be to store some JSON and serve it over REST? Mockly is my answer: a prototyping tool for exercising a frontend against realistic-looking endpoints—not a production backend or a promise that a future API will match automatically.
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Why I built Mockly
I got tired of waiting for the backend. On a project, the frontend can be ready to move while the API is still being built. I had used a mock-hosting service before, but wanted a straightforward way to define data and get usable endpoints without building a mock server from scratch.
The Tool Desk
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What you can do with the endpoints
Mockly is meant to cover common frontend development needs, from rendering a list to trying a loading or error state. Its documented features include:
- Read and change records: list and record reads, plus
POST,PATCH,PUTandDELETE. - Shape a collection response: filter by text or numeric ranges, search across fields, sort results and paginate them with metadata.
- Work with related data: embed related records in responses.
- Exercise edge cases: configure a fixed status and response body, or introduce a delay to test error handling and loading states.
- Limit access to a mock: disable methods or disable a project when you no longer want its endpoints available.
These behaviors are useful for frontend prototyping, but a realistic-looking response is only as useful as its resemblance to the API the application will eventually receive. Mockly does not make schema, authentication, error-shape or other contract differences disappear.
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How I use it while the real API is being built
My approach is to keep the frontend’s API functions and query hooks in place, and point them at Mockly through a configurable base URL. In a Vite project, for example, that might be VITE_API_URL.
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- Create a Mockly project and collection, then use the collection endpoint as the development API base URL.
- Keep requests behind the application’s normal API layer rather than scattering full endpoint URLs through components.
- Build the interface against the mock data and use configured delays or responses to exercise relevant states.
- When the backend is ready, change
VITE_API_URLto the company API’s base URL and check the integration against its actual contract.
Changing the base URL can make the switch easier, but it is not a compatibility guarantee. Confirm that paths, fields, authentication, status codes and error responses line up with the real service, and adjust the API layer where they do not.
Try the public demo—or create a project
The Mockly homepage offers a public demo that does not require an account. According to the current official documentation, the demo is writable, resets to its fixtures hourly, allows up to 60 requests per minute per IP, and limits each record to 8 KB.
For a project of your own, the documentation currently states these service limits:
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| Limit | Documented value |
|---|---|
| Collections per project | 25 |
| Records per collection | 500 |
| Objects per import | 500 |
| Requests to a project’s mocks | 600 per minute |
Those project limits are distinct from the public demo’s 60 requests per minute per IP. They are Mockly limits, not general properties of REST APIs, and may change; check the current documentation before depending on them.
Keep public mock data deliberately fake
Mock endpoints are open by default. The official documentation says there is no token, header or origin check, and CORS is open; anyone with the endpoint URL can read, create, edit or delete records. As the docs warn: “The publicId is not a secret: it travels in the URL and lands in browser history, logs and anything you paste it into.”
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Do not put real personal data, API keys, tokens or production exports into a public mock. Mock authentication may help you exercise a frontend login flow, but Mockly describes it as mock-grade protection, not a security boundary. Disabling a project causes its endpoints to return 403 while preserving the data; it should not be treated as a way to secure sensitive records.
A prototyping tool, not a production backend
Mockly is for getting frontend work moving and trying the application’s interactions before the production API is available. Its documented quotas, public-by-default access and mock-oriented features are reasons to treat it as a development aid rather than a place to host a real application backend. The available product information does not establish an independent uptime record, security audit or service-level commitment.
I describe Mockly as free, and said, “That’s why it’s free and will stay free.” That is my intention, not a binding guarantee about future terms. The useful part of the idea is simpler: when you need something to build against, a small JSON-backed API can close the gap until the real one is ready.
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