We have finally staggered out of March and into another month of the COVID-19 crisis. And that time of the week and month has come when we must discourse of the State of the APIs not just over the past month.
We recently launched API.expert 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 you want them!
Each week, month and year we’ll look at the APIs we track in a variety of sectors for their quality (using our patent pending CASC score) and other factors like uptime and availability.
If something is missing that you think should be here, don’t hesitate to drop us a line!
Now, onto what the last seven days and last month can tells us about where the world of APIs is in early 2020.
API Performance Headlines
We look at over 200 APIs and pull all the metrics together to give you a general feeling for the service quality for an organization’s APIs in a particular category.
We do see that certain providers consistently vie for top spot in their category including Twitter, Slack and Github with others doing less well such as Cisco’s Spark services.
Top Performers based on overall quality in each category were:
CASC score
Month of March, 2020
| Category | Organization | CASC score |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate Infrastructure | GitHub | 963 |
| Cryptocurrency Exchanges | LATOKEN | 932 |
| PSD2 Banks | BABN AMRO Bank | 947 |
| Search | 937 | |
| Social Networks | Twitter |
953 |
| UK Government | GOV.UK | 925 |
| UK Open Banking (Open Data) | Bank of Ireland | 958 |
| US Government | Department of Justice | 979 |
Just two changes this month with ABN AMRO Bank replacing BNP Paribas at the top of PSD2 Banks (BNP Paribas is not currently monitored) in PSD2 Banks and Google Twitter in Social Networks. After a volatile month in February, we have seen a great deal more stability for the top-performing APIs in March. In 4 out of the 8 categories, the top API has managed to sustain as CASC score of over 950 for a whole month, which is an excellent showing on their parts.
Top Performers by Latency
Month of March, 2020
| Category | Organization | Median Latency |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate Infrastructure | Slack | 186 ms |
| Cryptocurrency Exchanges | FTX | 216 ms |
| PSD2 Banks | Open Bank Project | 201 ms |
| Search | 391 ms | |
| Social Networks | Google |
121 ms |
| UK Government | Police.UK | 76 ms |
| UK Open Banking (Open Data) | HSBC | 87 ms |
| US Government | Department of Justice | 72 ms |
Only one change since February with Open Bank Project replacing BNP Paribas, who are not currently being monitored. FTX are first again for latency in Cryptocurrency Exchanges, but only 8th out of 18 overall albeit with a respectable CASC score of 824.
Worst quality across all categories
Month of March, 2020
| Category | Organization | CASC score |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate Infrastructure | Cisco Spark | 665 |
| Cryptocurrency Exchanges | Oasis Dex | 168 |
| PSD2 Banks | Visa | 555 |
| Search | Nobody below 800! | |
| Social Networks | Nobody below 800! | |
| UK Government | NHS | 409 |
| UK Open Banking (Open Data) | Halifax | 668 |
| US Government | Department of Commerce | 370 |
Only one change from last month with Halifax swapping places with Santander (UK) at the bottom of UK Open Banking (Open Banking). After a spectacularly bad month, Oasis Dex claim back the overall wooden spoon from NHS. As we have seen for the last few weeks and months, bad APIs tend to stay bad. All of these APIs would benefit from a little (or a lot of) TLC.
See you again in a month as we assess how matters went in April.
