QuizBase vs Open Trivia DB — extending OpenTDB with scale, multilingual coverage, and a developer surface

Open Trivia DB is one of our source databases — a community-contributed catalog with 5,296 verified English questions under CC-BY-SA. QuizBase blends OpenTDB with 10 other open datasets into over a million questions, EN + PL at parity today (more languages on demand), 5-level calibrated difficulty grading (`trivial` to `expert`), multi-layer taxonomy (categories, subcategories, tags, curated topics, and cultural regions), and a developer surface (OpenAPI 3.1, TypeScript SDK, MCP server with OAuth).

At a glance

Total questions

1.17M QuizBase

vs 5.3k (Open Trivia DB)
Languages supported

2 QuizBase

vs 1 (Open Trivia DB)
Difficulty grading

5 levels (trivial → expert), LLM-calibrated per question QuizBase

vs 3 levels (easy / medium / hard), metadata tag, no calibration (Open Trivia DB)
Taxonomy density

24 categories · 30.8K+ subcategories · 81.7K+ tags · 2.2K+ curated topics · 190+ cultural regions QuizBase

vs 24 flat categories, no subcategories, tags, topics, or regions (Open Trivia DB)
Topical focus

General trivia (all domains) QuizBase

vs General trivia (community-contributed) (Open Trivia DB)

When to use QuizBase

Volume matters — over a million questions versus 5,296 (200×+ more catalog, blended from 11 sources including OpenTDB)
Difficulty grading matters — 5-level calibrated difficulty per question, from `trivial` to `expert`
You need Polish today (333k PL on `?quality=high`) or other languages on demand without running your own translation pipeline
Multi-layer taxonomy matters — categories + subcategories + tags + topics + cultural regions, not just 24 flat categories
Developer surface matters — OpenAPI 3.1, TypeScript SDK on npm, MCP server with OAuth 2.1 for Claude Desktop / Cursor / ChatGPT, IETF rate-limit headers, RFC 9457 errors, public status page

Content & scale

Dimension	QuizBase	Open Trivia DB
Total questions	1,173,456	5,296
Languages supported	2	1
Difficulty grading	5 levels (trivial → expert), LLM-calibrated per question	3 levels (easy / medium / hard), metadata tag, no calibration
Taxonomy density	24 categories · 30.8K+ subcategories · 81.7K+ tags · 2.2K+ curated topics · 190+ cultural regions	24 flat categories, no subcategories, tags, topics, or regions
Topical focus	General trivia (all domains)	General trivia (community-contributed)

Attribution & licenses

Dimension	QuizBase	Open Trivia DB
Public data dump	CC-BY-SA dump (GitHub release, ~482k records)	Yes (CC-BY-SA via api.php with `amount=50` calls)

Reliability

Dimension	QuizBase	Open Trivia DB
Status page	https://quizbase.runriva.com/status	n/a

Developer surface

Dimension	QuizBase	Open Trivia DB
OpenAPI 3.1 spec	https://quizbase.runriva.com/openapi.json	n/a
TypeScript SDK	@quizbase/client (npm)	n/a
MCP server transport	Streamable HTTP (/mcp endpoint)	n/a

Migrating from Open Trivia DB

typescript

// Before — Open Trivia DB
const response = await fetch('https://opentdb.com/api.php?amount=10');
const { results } = await response.json();
// results[0].question (HTML-encoded), results[0].correct_answer

// After — QuizBase
import { QuizBase } from '@quizbase/client';

const qb = new QuizBase({ apiKey: process.env.QUIZBASE_API_KEY! });
const { data } = await qb.questions.list({
  limit: 10,
  lang: 'en',          // or 'pl', more on demand
  quality: 'high',     // surface the LLM-graded high-quality slice
  difficulty: 'medium' // trivial | easy | medium | hard | expert
});

// data[0].question (plain text), data[0].correct_answer, data[0].difficulty