QuizBase vs The Trivia API — volume, calibrated difficulty, and multilingual coverage

The Trivia API is a vetted commercial trivia catalog with 14,400 questions on its paid Complete plan. QuizBase ships over a million questions blended from 11 open sources, 5-level calibrated difficulty grading (`trivial` to `expert`), EN + PL at parity today (more languages on demand), and a Free tier that works in production — 500 requests/day, no credit card, every endpoint, every feature.

At a glance

Total questions

1.17M QuizBase

vs 14.4k (The Trivia API)
Languages supported

2 QuizBase

vs 8 (The Trivia API)
Difficulty grading

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

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

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

vs 10 flat categories, per-question tags + regions + niche flag (no top-level listing endpoint) (The Trivia API)
Topical focus

General trivia (all domains) QuizBase

vs General trivia (The Trivia API)

When to use QuizBase

Volume matters — over a million questions versus 14,400 (80×+ more catalog to draw from)
Difficulty grading matters — 5-level calibrated difficulty per question, from `trivial` to `expert`, not metadata tags applied at write time
You need EN + PL today (333k each on `?quality=high`) and want more languages on demand without waiting for a vendor roadmap
Multi-layer taxonomy matters — categories, subcategories, tags, curated topics, and cultural regions for filtering by specific themes
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	The Trivia API
Total questions	1,173,456	14,400
Languages supported	2	8
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	10 flat categories, per-question tags + regions + niche flag (no top-level listing endpoint)
Topical focus	General trivia (all domains)	General trivia

Reliability

Dimension	QuizBase	The Trivia API
Status page	https://quizbase.runriva.com/status	n/a

Developer surface

Dimension	QuizBase	The Trivia API
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
Rate-limit headers	IETF RateLimit-* (RateLimit-Limit, RateLimit-Remaining, RateLimit-Reset, RateLimit-Policy) + Retry-After on 429	IETF `RateLimit-*` headers

Pricing & access

Dimension	QuizBase	The Trivia API
Paid tier starts at	Indie — see /pricing	Complete subscription — price on sign-up dashboard

Migrating from The Trivia API

typescript

// Before — The Trivia API
const response = await fetch(
  'https://the-trivia-api.com/v2/questions?limit=10',
  { headers: { 'x-api-key': process.env.TRIVIA_API_KEY! } }
);
const questions = await response.json();
// questions[0].question.text, questions[0].correctAnswer, ...

// 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',
  quality: 'high',     // surface the LLM-graded high-quality slice
  difficulty: 'medium' // pick from trivial | easy | medium | hard | expert
});

// data[0].question, data[0].correct_answer, data[0].difficulty