API Ratings: Jan 18–25 | Messaging APIs

Something of interest

Here’s something you don’t see every day – in fact, I don’t recall having seen it over the last year that we’ve been doing these API.expert reports: the Messaging APIs category has no API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more.

Of the 9 Messaging APIs in the category, 7 of them are in the Green Zone with a CASC score of 8.00 or more. Cisco WebEx Teams, which has often languished, is in 7^th place with a CASC score of 8.24.

That’s a perfectly respectable CASC score as far as it goes. Zoom, topping the table with a CASC score of 8.94, in the grand scheme is doing fine.

Zoom has a 100% pass rate and is second in the Messaging APIs category for outliers. It’s only the third-fastest though, so that is where it could use some improvements.

Total Time is fastest in North America with Europe a strong second. But Zoom is a global brand. It is letting down its users in the rest of the world.

Handshake Time looks like the rate-determining latency component for Messaging APIs. East Asia, South Asia and Oceania are all adding about 400 ms in extra latency from Handshake Time.

It’s through active API monitoring that you can understand just what your users are really experiencing when they are using your service around the world. And it can be quite different to what is happening inside your own corporate network and data center.

Looking to optimize network performance and especially Handshake Time outside North America is going to lead to a big improvement in the quality of service those Zoom users experience.

API Ratings: Overall Quality

Week Ending 25 January 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Corporate Infrastructure	Box	9.45
COVID-19	WHO	9.39
Search	Microsoft Bing	9.23
Social Networks	Google	9.47
UK Government	GOV.UK	9.87
US Government	Department of Justice	9.83
Messaging APIs	Zoom	8.94

GOV.UK in the UK Government category takes the overall title again this week with a CASC score of 9.97, up from 9.69. A CASC score of over 9.00 is very good and one of 9.50 or more exceptional. Two of the six API ratings categories are headed by an organization with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week. 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. This week, just two categories dipped below 9.25.

API Ratings: Top Performers by Latency

Week Ending 25 January 2021

Category	Organization	Median Latency
Corporate Infrastructure	Microsoft Office	223 ms
COVID-19	WHO	85 ms
Search	Google	383 ms
Social Networks	Google	60 ms
UK Government	Police.UK	83 ms
US Government	Department of Justice	48 ms
Messaging APIs	Slack	268 ms

Department of Justice in the US Government takes the overall title again with a median latency of 48 ms, the same as last week. An important caveat: medians can be misleading! An API might have a fast median latency but produce many slow outliers. So just being fast isn’t everything. You have to be reliable too if you want to have good API ratings and get a high CASC score!

API Ratings: Worst Quality

Week Ending 25 January 2021

Category	Organization	CASC score
Corporate Infrastructure	Nobody under 8.00!
COVID-19	covid-api.com	0.92
Search	Nobody under 8.00!
Social Networks	Nobody under 8.00!
UK Government	NHS	6.35
US Government	NASA	6.54
Messaging	RingCentral (Sandbox)	5.92

COVID-19 Statistics API (covid-api.com) in the Covid-19 category takes the overall Wooden Spoon this week with a CASC score of 0.92. See you again in a week as we head out of January and into February. Also don’t forget to look out for our monthly report for December and the weekly and monthly financial API reports. We will also be publishing special reports on the State of the APIs in the 2020, so that’s something else to look forward to!

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