API Ratings August 24-31, 2020: New Structure

The time of the week has once more rolled round for us to check on API ratings over the past seven days. Can you believe the year is two-thirds over?!

We launched API.expert earlier in the year as a simple way to provide everybody with insights into the API economy and the leading APIs in different categories in particular.

The basic service is free and will remain free, but other, related services will be built on top of it, including your very own API.expert dashboards.

If something is missing that you think should be here, don’t hesitate to drop us a line! Now, onto what the past week tells us API ratings as we dive into the very last week of August 2020.

API Performance Headlines

To compile our API ratings, we look at more than 200 APIs. Then we pull all the metrics together to give you a general feeling for API quality in a particular category.

We do see that certain providers consistently vie for top spot in their API ratings category, including GitHub and Google. Others do less well, such as Halifax and the NHS.

Top API Ratings – CASC Score

Week Ending August 31

Category	Organization	CASC score
Corporate Infrastructure	GitHub	9.66
COVID-19	COVID-19 Finnhub API	9.37
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	Coinpaprika	9.51
Fintech	Stripe	9.50
Search	Google	9.48
Social Networks	Google	9.73
Open Banking – PSD2	Nordea Bank	9.92
Open Banking – UK	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	9.74
Open Banking – UK Open Data	Bank of Ireland	9.81
UK Government	Police.UK	9.19
Us Government	Department of Justice	9.88

We have rearranged and renamed some of the categories to better reflect the different types of API ratings, and have added two new categories.

We’ve seen some changes in the API ratings:

• Stripe topping the new Fintech category
• Google replacing Twitter in Social Networks
• Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox) topping the new category of Open Banking UK
• Police.UK swapping with GOV.UK in UK Government

Nordea Bank retains the crown once again for the private sector with an exceptionally good CASC score of 9.92 (same as last week).

A CASC score of over 9.00 is very good and one of 9.50 or more exceptional. Eight of the 11 categories are headed by organization with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week (plus Google has a CASC score of 9.48 in Search, and Coinpaprika and Stripe just creep over the line).

Sustaining a CASC score of >9.25 over a period of several weeks is a good showing and congratulations to those organizations that achieved it.

Top API Ratings – Latency

Week Ending August 31

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Corporate Infrastructure	Microsoft Office	232 ms
COVID-19	CDC Tools	161 ms
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	FTX	213 ms
Fintech	Open Bank Project (Sandbox)	198 ms
Search	Facebook	315 ms
Social Networks	Google	58 ms
Open Banking - PSD2	Railsbank	94 ms
Open Banking - UK	Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox)	149 ms
Open Banking - UK Open Data	HSBC	81 ms
UK Government	Police.UK	90 ms
Us Government	Department of Justice	48 ms

A certain amount of change in the API ratings for latency this week:

• Open Bank Project (Sandbox) topping the new category of Fintech
• Royal Bank of Scotland (Sandbox) the new one of Open Banking – UK
• Railsbank replacing Nordea in Open Banking – PSD2

Department of Justice claims the overall title from Google with a median latency of just 48 ms. An important caveat: medians can be misleading! An API might have a fast median latency but produce many slow outliers. These won’t affect the median, but they mean that users can experience many calls that were unacceptably slow. So just being fast isn’t everything. You have to be reliable too if you want to have good APIs and get a high CASC score! As so often, FTX tops the Cryptocurrency Exchange category by median latency. This week they are down to twelfth out of 18 overall with a CASC score of 8.22, placing them in the Green Zone.

Worst API Quality Overall

Week Ending August 31

Category	Organization	CASC Score
Corporate Infrastructure	Nobody below 8.00!
COVID-19	Coronavirus Data API (thevirustracker.com)	6.65
Cryptocurrency Exchanges	RadarRelay	6.53
Fintech	Open Bank Project (Sandbox)	5.62
Search	Nobody below 8.00!
Social Networks	Nobody below 8.00!
Open Banking - PSD2	Nobody below 8.00!
Open Banking - UK	Barclays (Sandbox auth)	3.20
Open Banking - UK Open Data	HSBC	7.90
UK Government	GOV.UK	4.59
Us Government	Federal Communications Commission	7.28

Another fairly volatile week:

• Nobody below 8.00 now in Corporate Infrastructure, Search and the new category of Open Banking PSD2
• Open Bank Project (Sandbox) a new entry in the new category of Fintech
• Barclays (Sandbox Auth) a new entrant in Open Banking – UK
• GOV.UK replacing NHS in UK Government
• Federal Communications Commission a new entry in US Government

Barclays (Sandbox Auth) makes a nightmare debut by taking the overall loser award for the week with a CASC score of just 3.20.

Something of Interest

Open Banking – UK is a new API ratings category that covers the UK Open Banking Sandboxes (for now) and the authentication services they use, if they also mimic the auth servers used in ‘real’ Open Banking. We can something interesting from a quick glance at the table. Of the 8 APIs from 5 banks, 6 APIs are firmly in the Green Zone, and 5 have CASC scores over 9.00. But Barclays’s 2 APIs are languishing solidly in the Amber Zone for Barclays (Sandbox), and Barclays (Sandbox Auth) made a nightmare debut in the Red Zone. What’s going on? All the other banks have pass rates of at least 99.82% and not more than 1.10% outliers. Barclays (Sandbox) is second-fastest, but Barclays (Sandbox Auth) is slow. And it has a very high number of outliers and a pretty low pass rate. It’s a fatal combo. The fact that the other banks can all manage so much better when doing identical things suggests that Barclays needs to take a look at what is going on with their sandbox. It also suggests how useful peer comparison is – In Open Banking, many banks offer the same services. So it is not just a case of how well you think you might be doing with your unique APIs. You can compare them directly with your competitors and see straightaway whether you are indeed best of breed – or, as might be the case, not. See you again in a week as we look once more at API ratings and discuss the first week of September. Also, don’t forget to look out this week for our September monthly report!

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