VirusTotal Has a Free API — Scan Files and URLs Against 70+ Antivirus Engines

VirusTotal scans files and URLs against 70+ antivirus engines simultaneously. Their API is free for up to 500 requests per day. One scan. Seventy verdicts. Zero cost. The Story A friend downloaded a tool from GitHub. Their antivirus said it was clean. But they had a nagging feeling — one engine isn't enough. They uploaded it to VirusTotal manually. Three engines flagged it as a trojan. The "clean" binary was actually malware that their specific AV didn't detect. Now they automate this check for every download. Here's how. Get Your Free API Key Sign up at virustotal.com Go to your profile → API Key Copy your key (free tier: 500 lookups/day, 4 requests/minute) Scan a URL \`python import requests import time API_KEY = "your-api-key-here" headers = {"x-apikey": API_KEY} Submit URL for scanning url_to_scan = "https://example.com/suspicious-download" response = requests.post( "https://www.virustotal.com/api/v3/urls", headers=headers, data={"url": url_to_scan} ) analysis_id = response.json()[