# Free FHIR database and sandbox

> A free HL7 FHIR R4 database to build against: the Anpheros sandbox with 30 synthetic patients per project, the production API, OAuth and webhooks, no card, EU-hosted — and how it differs from a self-hosted server.

Source: https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/free-fhir-database

**A free FHIR database is a place where you can store and query HL7 FHIR R4 resources without paying for infrastructure while you build and test.** Anpheros offers one as its sandbox: the same API as production, 30 synthetic patients per project with realistic records, your own test patients, an API key you create yourself, and no card or contract. It is free for as long as you build; you pay only when you go to production with real patients.

## What the sandbox gives you

| | Sandbox |
|---|---|
| Price | Free, no time limit, no card |
| FHIR | HL7 FHIR R4, 26 resource types, search, history, transactions, `$everything`, the International Patient Summary |
| REST | the simpler REST v1 view of the same data |
| Patients | 30 synthetic patients per project, plus up to 500 test patients you create |
| Writes | 10,000 a day per project |
| Storage | 250 MB per project (data and files) |
| Auth | API keys and the full OAuth 2.1 / SMART on FHIR flow, with a test consent screen |
| Events | signed webhooks, retried, with a local verification example |
| SDKs | Dart / Flutter and TypeScript |
| Region | hosted in the European Union, like production |
| Reset | one click, the project returns to its 30 synthetic patients |

The synthetic patients are generated with coherent histories: conditions, medications matched to them, laboratory results with LOINC codes and reference ranges, vitals over months, documents and an emergency summary. They look like real records to your code, so a dashboard, a chart or an AI prompt built against them works unchanged in production.

## Why not just run HAPI FHIR locally?

You can, and for learning FHIR it is a fine choice. A self-hosted server gives you a FHIR endpoint; it does not give you patient consent, pairwise identifiers between applications, provenance on every write, an audit the patient can read, laboratory import from HL7 v2 or a hosted OAuth server. Those are the parts a healthcare product spends its first months on. The Anpheros sandbox has them from the first request, and they are the same code that runs in production.

The trade-off is that Anpheros is a managed service with a defined data model, not a blank FHIR server. If your product needs resource types or extensions outside the 26 supported, check the [FHIR platform](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/fhir) guide first.

## What you can build in the sandbox

- A patient app that reads and writes its user's record with consent.
- A clinic or laboratory integration that writes on behalf of an organisation.
- An AI assistant or agent that reads a patient's context through the context API and writes back with AI provenance.
- A migration test: import an existing dataset as FHIR transactions and check what your code sees.

The [Getting started](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/getting-started) guide goes from an API key to all of these in about an hour.

## From sandbox to production

Production uses the same API, the same SDKs and the same consent flow. You create a production key, point your configuration at it and your sandbox code runs against real patients. The first month of production is free on every plan; after that the [pricing](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/pricing) is a monthly price per organisation for a number of stored patients, with sandbox, test and synthetic patients never counted.

## Limits to know before you start

- The sandbox is for building and testing. Real patient data must not be stored in it.
- Rate limits are lower than in production; see [Limits and rate limits](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/limits).
- Resetting a project deletes everything you wrote in it, including test patients.

## Related

- [FHIR MCP server for AI agents](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/mcp)
- [Getting started](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/getting-started)
- [FHIR platform](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/fhir)
- [Healthcare API with patient consent](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/healthcare-api-patient-consent)
- [How Anpheros compares with other FHIR servers](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/fhir-server-comparison)
- [Pricing](https://developers.anpheros.com/guides/pricing)