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20+ Emotion Recognition APIs That Will

Leave You Impressed, and Concerned
POSTED BY BILL DOERRFELD | DECEMBER 31, 2015
Updated on September 26th, 2019

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consumer in the opportune moment. Sound like 1984? The truth is that it’s not that far from reality. Subscribe
Machine emotional intelligence is a burgeoning frontier that could have huge consequences in
not only advertising, but in new startups, healthcare, wearables, education, and more.

There’s a lot of API-accessible software online that parallels the human ability to discern emotive RECENT POSTS
gestures. These algorithm driven APIs use use facial detection and semantic analysis to interpret
mood from photos, videos, text, and speech. Today we explore over 20 emotion recognition APIs
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and SDKs that can be used in projects to interpret a user’s mood. Endpoints

Review of Optic
How Do Emotion Recognition APIs Work?
How to Measure The Success of
Emotive analytics is an interesting blend of psychology
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and technology. Though arguably reductive, many facial
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expression detection tools lump human emotion into 7
main categories: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, Surprise, A Beginner’s Guide to Building a Slack
Contempt, and Disgust. With facial emotion detection, Bot in PHP
algorithms detect faces within a photo or video, and sense API Taxonomy Explained: The Many
micro expressions by analyzing the relationship between Types of APIs
points on the face, based on curated databases compiled
Ultimate Guide To 9 Common HTTP
in academic environments.
Methods
To detect emotion in the written word, sentiment analysis processing software can analyze text to
conclude if a statement is generally positive or negative based on keywords and their valence
index. Lastly, sonic algorithms have been produced that analyze recorded speech for both tone Search Search
and word content.
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Use Cases For Emotion Recognition
Smile — you’re being watched. The visual detection market is expanding tremendously. It was  Nordic APIs RSS
recently estimated that the global advanced facial recognition market will grow from $2.77 Billion in
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2015 to $6.19 Billion in 2020. Emotion recognition takes mere facial detection/recognition a step
further, and its use cases are nearly endless.

An obvious use case is within group testing. User response to video games, commercials, or
products can all be tested at a larger scale, with large data accumulated automatically, and thus
more efficiently. Bentley used facial expression recognition in a marketing campaign to suggest car
model types based on emotive responses to certain stimuli. Technology that reveals your feelings
has also been suggested to spot struggling students in a classroom environment, or help autistics
better interact with others. Some use cases include:

Helping to better measure TV ratings.

Adding another security layer to security at malls, airports, sports arenas, and other public
venues to detect malicious intent.
Wearables that help autistics discern emotion
Check out counters, virtual shopping
Creating new virtual reality experiences

Facial Detection APIs that Recognize

Mood
These computer vision APIs use facial detection, eye tracking, and specific facial position cues to
determine a subject’s mood. There are many APIs that scan an image or video to detect faces, but
these go the extra mile to spit back an emotive state. This is often a combination of weight
assigned to 7 basic emotions, and valence — the subject’s overall sentiment.

1: Emotient
Emotient is great for an ad campaign that wants to track attention, engagement, and sentiment
from viewers. The RESTful Emotient Web API can be integrated into apps, or used to help power
AB testing. In addition to the API, there’s a good account analytics panel. View a demo here.

2: Affectiva
With 3,289,274 faces analyzed to date, Affectiva is another solution for massive scale engagement
detection. They offer SDKs and APIs for mobile developers, and provide nice visual analytics to
track expressions over time. Visit their test demo to graph data points in response to viewing
various ads.

3: EmoVu
Produced by Eyeris, EmoVu facial detection products incorporate machine learning and micro
expression detection that allow an agency to “accurately measure their content’s emotional
engagement and effectiveness on their target audience.” With a Desktop SDK, Mobile SDK, and an
API for fine grained control, EmoVu offers wide platform support, including many tracking features,
like head position, tilt, eye tracking, eye open/close, and more. They offer a free demo with
account creation.

Looking for APIs? Check out API Discovery: 11 Ways to Find APIs

4: Nviso
Switzerland-based Nviso specializes in emotion video analytics, using 3D facial imaging tech to
monitor many different facial data points to produce likelihoods for 7 main emotions. Though no
free demo is offered, Nviso claims to provide a real-time imaging API. They have a reputation,
awarded for smarter computing in 2013 by IBM. With its international corporate vibe, Nviso may
not be the choice for a developer looking for a quick plug-in-play ability with immediate support.

5: Kairos
The Emotion Analysis API by Kairos is a more SaaS-y startup in the facial
detection arena. Scalable and on-demand, you send them video, and they
send back coordinates that detect smiles, surprise, anger, dislike and
drowsiness. They offer a Free Demo (no account setup required) that will
analyze and graph your facial responses to a few commercial ads.

The sleek-branded Kairos could be a developer favorite. It looks newly

supported with a growing community, with transparent documentation for its
Face Recognition API , Crowd Analytics SDK, and Reporting API. The Emotion Analysis API just
recently went live.

6 : Project Oxford by Microsoft

Microsoft’s Project Oxford is a catalogue of artificial intelligence APIs focused on computer
vision, speech, and language analysis. After the project’s age-guessing tool went viral last year for
it’s “incongruities,” some may be reluctant to try Microsoft’s emotion detection capabilities (this is
the app that thought Keanu was only 0.01831 sad).

Nordic APIs founders Travis Spencer and Andreas Krohn – 99% happy

The API only works with photos. It detects faces, and responds in JSON with ridiculously specific
percentages for each face using the core 7 emotions, and Neutral. Truncate the decimals and this
would be a very simple and to the point API, a very useful tool given the right situation. Upload a
photo to the free online demo here to test Project Oxford’s computer vision capabilities.

7: Face Reader by Noldus

Used in the academic sphere, the Face Reader API by Noldus is based on machine learning,
tapping into a database of 10,000 facial expression images. The API uses 500 key facial points to
analyze 6 basic facial expressions as well as neutral and contempt. Face Reader also detects gaze
direction and head orientation. Noldus seems to have a solid amount of research backing its
software.

8: Sightcorp
Sightcorp is another facial recognition provider. Their Insight SDK offers wide platform support,
and tracks hundreds of facial points, eye gaze, and has been used in creative projects, museum
showcases, and at TEDX Amsterdam. Sightcorp’s F.A.C.E. API (still in beta) is an cloud analysis
engine for automated emotional expression detection.

9: SkyBiometry
SkyBiometry is a cloud-based face detection and recognition tool which
allows you detect emotion in photos. Upload a file, and SkyBiometry detects
faces, and senses the mood between happy, sad, angry, surprised, disgusted,
scared, and neutral, with a percentage rate for each point. It accurately
determines if a person is smiling or not. A benefit to Skybiometry is that it’s a
spin off of a successful biometric company — so the team’s been around for
a while. Check out their free demo to see how it works, and view their
extensive online API documentation.

10: Face++
From their developer center, the onboarding process for Face++ looks intuitive. Face++ is more of
a face recognition tool that compares faces with stored faces — perfect for name tagging photos
in social networks. It makes our list because it does determine if a subject is smiling or not. Face++
has a wide set of developer SDKs in various languages, and an online demo.

11: Imotions
Imotions is a biometrics research platform that provides software and hardware for monitoring
many types of bodily cues. Imotions syncs with Emotient’s facial expression technology, and adds
extra layers to detect confusion and frustration. The Imotions API can monitor video live feeds to
extract valence, or can aggregate previously recorded videos to analyze for emotions. Imotion
software has been used by Harvard, Procter & Gamble, Yale, the US Air Force, and was even used
in a Mythbusters episode.

12: CrowdEmotion
CrowdEmotion offers an API that uses facial recognition to detect the time series of the six
universal emotions as defined by Psychologist Paul Ekman (happiness, surprise, anger, disgust,
fear and sadness). Their online demo will analyze facial points in real-time video, and respond with
detailed visualizations. They offer an API sandbox, along with free monthly usage for live testing.
Check out the CloudEmotion API docs for specific information.

13: FacioMetrics
Founded at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), FacioMetrics is a company that provides SDKs for
incorporating face tracking, pose and gaze tracking, and expression analysis into apps. Their demo
video outlines some creative use cases in virtual reality scenarios. The software can be tested
using the Intraface iOS app.

Findface
The Findface software utilizes the NtechLab face recognition algorithm to recognize 7 basic
emotions as well as 50 complex attributes. It purportedly has a degree of 94% accuracy
recognizing 7 emotions: joy, surprise, sadness, anger, disgust, contempt, and fear. Note: Findface
does not offer a web API for the emotive recognition, however, it does provide a powerful SDK.

Text to Emotion Software

There are many sentiment analysis APIs out there that provide categorization or entity extraction,
but the APIs listed below specifically respond with an emotional summary given a body of plain
text. Some keywords to understand here are natural language processing — the use of machines
to detect “natural” human interaction, and deep linguistic analysis — the examination of sentence
structure, and relationships between keywords to derive sentiment.

You could use these APIs to do things like inform social media engagement analytics, add new
features to chat messaging, perform targeted news research, detect highly negative/positive
customer experiences, or optimize publishing with AB testing.

14: IBM Watson

Powered by the supercomputer IBM Watson, The Tone Analyzer detects emotional tones, social
propensities, and writing styles from any length of plain text. The API can be forked on GitHub.
Input your own selection on the demo to see tone percentile, word count, and a JSON response.
The IBM Watson Developer Cloud also powers other cool cognitive computing tools.

Also Read:Green APIs that Promote Sustainability and Climate Action

15: Receptiviti
Backed by decades of language-psychology research, the Receptiviti Natural Language Personality
Analytics API uses a process of target words and emotive categories to derive emotion and
personality from texts. Their Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis process is
even used by IBM Watson. With REST API endpoints and SDKs in all major programming
languages, Receptiviti looks both powerful and usable.

16: AlchemyAPI
The Alchemy API scans large chunks of text to determine the relevance of keywords and their
associated negative/positive connotations to get a sense of attitude or opinion. You can enter a
URL to receive a grade of positive, mixed, or negative overall sentiment. Though it’s more for
defining taxonomies and keyword relevance, the tool does offer an overall sentiment evaluation for
the document. Check out the demo or Sentiment Analysis API docs.

17: Bitext
The Text Analysis API by Bitext is another deep linguistic analysis tool. It can be used to analyze
words relations, sentences, structure, and dependencies to extract bias with its “built-in sentiment
scoring” functionality.

18: Mood Patrol

Hosted on the Mashape API marketplace, Mood Patrol by Soul Hackers Labs is a simple API that
extracts emotion from text. Good for analyzing small sections of text for cues, and responding with
fine grained adjectives that describe the emotional tone based on Plutchik’s 8 Basic Emotions. Visit
the Soul Hackers demo or API documentation.

19: Synesketch
Synesketch is basically the iTunes artwork player for the written word. It’s an innovative open
source tool that analyzes text for sentiment, and converts emotional tone into some awesome
visualizations. Talk about emotional intelligence — “[Synesketch] code feels the words”, dynamically
representing text in animated visual patterns so as to reveal underlying emotion. A few third-party
apps have already been constructed with this open source software to recognize and visualize
emotion from Tweets, speech, poetry, and more.

20: Tone API

The Tone API is a speedy SaaS API built for marketers to quantify the emotional response to their
content. The tool takes a body of text and analyzes for emotional breadth, intensity, and
comparison with other texts. Looks to be a cool service for automating in-house research to
optimize smart content publishing.

The Power of Third Party APIs:How Genews Uses Third Party APIs to Support Gender Equality

21: Repustate API

The Repustate Sentiment Analysis process is based in linguistic theory, and reviews cues from
lemmatization, polarity, negations, part of speech, and more to reach an informed sentiment from
a text document. Check out info on their Text Analytics API.

Speech to Emotion Software

Lastly, humans also interact with machines via speech. There are plenty of speech recognition
APIs on the market, whose results could be processed by other sentiment analysis APIs listed
above. Perhaps this is why an easy-to-consume web API that instantly recognizes emotion from
recorded voice is rare. Use cases for this tech could be:

Monitoring customer support centers

Providing dispatch squads automated emotional intelligence

22: Good Vibrations

The Good Vibrations API senses mood from recorded voice. The API and SDK use universal
biological signals to perform a real time analysis of the user’s emotion to sense stress, pleasure, or
disorder.

They’re not really web APIs, but EMOSpeech is an enterprise software application that allows call
centers to analyze emotion, and Audeering software detects emotion, tone, and gender in
recorded voice.

23: Vokaturi
Vokaturi software purportedly can “understand the emotion in a speaker’s voice in the same way a
human can.” With the Open Vokaturi SDK, developers can integrate Vokaturi into their apps. Given
a database of speech recordings, the Vokaturi software will compute percent likelihoods for 5
emotive states: neutrality, happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. They provide code samples for
working in C and Python.

Conclusion: The Future of Emotion Recognition

Machine emotional intelligence is still evolving, but the future could soon see targeted ads that
respond to not only our demographic (age, gender, likes, etc.) but to our current emotional state.
For point of sale advertising, this information could be leveraged to nudge sales when people are
most emotionally vulnerable, getting into some murky ethical territory. Emotional recognition via
facial detection is also shady if the user isn’t aware of their consent to be recorded visually. There
are of course data privacy legalities any API provider or consumer should be aware of before
implementation.

We are only on the tip of the iceberg when it comes to machine human interaction, but cognitive
computing technologies like these are exciting steps toward creating true machine emotional
intelligence.

Did we leave out any good Emotion Recognition APIs? Respond below or add to this Product
Hunt list.

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 AB testing, ad, advertising, AI, algorithms, analytics, api, api strategy, APIs, artificial, 12 Comments
audio, big data, biometrics, camera, cognitive, computing, detection, emotion, emotion
recognition, emotion video analytics, engagement, eye tracking, face, face analysis, faces,
facial, facial analysis, facial detection, images, intelligence, machine intelligence, machine
learning, mobile, photo, photographs, psychology, response, SDK, sentiment, sentiment
analysis, text, textual, video, webcam

About Bill Doerrfeld

Bill Doerrfeld is a tech journalist and API specialist, focusing on API economy research
and marketing strategy for developer programs. He is the Editor in Chief for Nordic APIs.
He leads content direction and oversees the publishing schedule for the Nordic APIs blog.
Bill personally reviews all submissions for the blog and is always on the hunt for API
stories; you can pitch your article ideas on our Create With Us page. Follow him on
Twitter, or visit his personal website.

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Sensq • 4 years ago

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the list.

I'm interested with Text to Emotion Software and have been researching for years.
Here is some I think you can add to the list:

- sentaero.com
- aylien.com
- textrazor.com
- text-processing.com
- apidemo.theysay.io

- sensq.com (Disclaimer: I'm working here)

3△ ▽ 2 • Reply • Share ›

Me717 > Sensq • 2 years ago

are any of these open source?
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Parth Shrivastava • 2 years ago

Hi Bill,

Indeed a great listicle. I work for ParallelDots (https://www.paralleldots.com), a company which provides both Visual
Emotion Detection and Text to Emotion API (https://www.paralleldots.co.... You can try the demo and I think you can
add this to the list.

Thanks
1△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Elisardo González • 4 years ago

Hi Bill,
In relEYEble we provide a multiplatform SDK to perform realtime audience measurement with Age & Gender
Estimation and Emotion Detection. You can test it by yourselft downloading our DEMO from www.releyeble.com
Great list!
⛺ View

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Lysbeth Leon > Elisardo González • 3 years ago

Woww, thanks Bill!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

David • 5 months ago • edited

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the article. This is a great list of emotion recognition software.

I'm a little bit interested in this topic and can share information about guys who has a rich experience working with
online video and image analysis software.

Currently, they are developing a product that includes mood detection and emotional travel mapping. If you are
interested, you can see information about them here Emotion recognition
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

ben • 2 years ago

I remember a tool where you could upload an audio file and it would tell you the emotional colour underpinning the
speaker's words. So like "pride" Does anyone remember this?
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Matthieu BRUNETEAU • 2 years ago

Hi Bill,
Thanks for that, you missed in your listing the TextToEmotions API from qemotion.com, who is one of the best API in
term of relevance and precision in French and English.

28 additional languages are now in development (including Chinese, Arab, Spanish, German, Italian):

The editor website: https://www.qemotion.com

The API details: http:dashboard.qemotion.com...

The company also proposes some advanced features :

- to detect the topics of the speech and put the emotional indicators on top of it (ex: staff -> Happiness; 22)
- to put new KPI like arousal dominance and emotional index, an emotional temperature of the speech.

Best regards,
Matt
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Felix Burkhardt • 3 years ago

great article, thanks!
Here's a company about emotion from speech, they are the license holder of the famous open source acoustic
feature extraction lib openSmile
http://audeering.com/
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Viktoriia Boichuk • 3 years ago

Wow! I liked this article so much, thank you! We have made a research on different Image Recognition APIs, you
may find it useful: https://opsway.com/blog/ima...
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Javi • 3 years ago

Hi Bill,
I love you so much, your list is what I needed, Thank You!
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

Sadi Vural • 3 years ago

You should also add "Ayonix" to the list
http://www.ayonix.com
△ ▽ • Reply • Share ›

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