Blog & News

Weekly Report

API Performance Highlights

Sep 27, 20233 min read
AE

Written by

APIContext Editorial Team

Editorial

Research, product, and field notes from the APIContext team on API reliability, conformance, and operational visibility.

For this week's API performance highlights we're going to talk about Barclays, some Fintech, and of course, the Department of Energy. Let's get into it.

Barclays Personal in the Open Banking UK Production collection API performance Barclays Business in the Open Banking UK Production collection API performance Barclays in the Open Banking UK Open Data collection API performance

In order:

  • Barclays Personal in the Open Banking UK Production collection decreased by 13% from 8.11 (in the Green Zone) to 7.02 (in the Yellow Zone).
  • Barclays Business in the Open Banking UK Production collection decreased by 16% from 8.24 (in the Green Zone) to 6.91 (in the Yellow Zone).
  • Barclays in the Open Banking UK Open Data collection decreased by 13% from 7.3 (in the Yellow Zone) to 6.29 (in the Yellow Zone).

These were all due to a large spike in outliers on the 23rd and 24th of September, combined with a few DNS lookup failures.

This may have been an unplanned issue affecting a number of monitored endpoints and is logged as OBIE-11935 and OBIE-11936. They note that this may have been a result of a planned OBIE downtime. There was also a planned maintenance at the same time period which might be related OBIE-11896.

To us, this seems a bit of a long period of outages for planned maintenance. We wonder if it was used as an excuse for something that happened after maintenance? We'll never know.

As an aside, we also cannot reach the Barclays developer portal either. Can you?

Stripe in the GGV Capital API-First collection API performance

Stripe in the GGV Capital API-First collection decreased by 11% from 9.41 (in the Green Zone) to 8.36 (in the Green Zone). This was due to a large increase in outliers affecting their one monitored endpoint from the morning of the 22nd of September.

Bank of Ireland in the Open Banking UK Open Data collection was in the Red Zone with a CASC score of 4.5. 

And a hearty dongratulations to the Bank of Ireland this week. The major outage we reported last week has finally been fixed. It only took them four days to fix a production, client-facing API!

Top Drops in API Performance

ZB.com in the Exchanges collection dropped 16 places. This was due to a number of very slow outliers around midday on the 23rd of the month.

Capital One in the Open Banking UK Production collection dropped 12 places. This was due to a scattering of slow outliers throughout the week combined with a few HTTP 500 Internal Server Error failures on the 18th of September.

Hate-Watching the Department of  Energy's API Performance

Dept of Energy in the US Government collection API performance

Dept of Energy in the US Government collection was in the Red Zone with a CASC score of 3.65.

Ahh, it's you again, will you ever get out of our Red Zone? The Department of Energy has slightly improved this week with outlier rates coming down by 0.25% points to 16.5%.  So it's slow but steady progress this week.

The Skinny

  • NewDay - Aqua in the Open Banking UK Production, Revolut in the Open Banking UK Production category takes the overall title for best API again this week with a CASC score of 9.82.
  • Contentful in the GGV Capital API-First category is the fastest API again this week with an average latency of 50 ms, up from 48 ms last week.
  • Monzo Bank is the best-performing bank in the Open Banking UK Production category with monitored AISP (non-consent) endpoints again this week with a CASC score of 9.2, down from 9.21 last week.
  • Dept of Energy in the US Government category is the overall worst performing API again this week with a CASC score of 3.65, up from 3.56 last week.
  • 7 categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.50 or more, down from 8 last week.
  • 14 categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more, the same as last week.
  • 0 categories have bottom API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more, down from 1 last week.
  • 8 categories have bottom API with a CASC score of 8.00 or more, down from 15 last week.
  • 4 APIs (Cater Allen Private Bank in the Open Banking UK Production collection with a CASC score of 4.05, Bank of Ireland in the Open Banking UK Open Data collection with a CASC score of 4.5, Dept of Energy in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 3.65, Dept of Commerce in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 4.79) are in the Red Zone with a CASC score of less than 6.00 this week, down from 5 last week.

API Performance Changes

Corporate Infrastructure

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Dropbox

9.0

9.13

12

9

-3

Google Workspace

9.25

9.22

7

5

-2

Docusign

9.09

9.17

9

8

-1

Microsoft Graph (Office)

8.7

8.65

14

13

-1

Adobe

9.2

9.2

8

7

-1

Intercom

9.3

9.22

5

6

1

Microsoft Office365

8.84

8.51

13

14

1

Auth0

9.26

8.75

6

12

6

Corporate Messaging

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Enterprise Messaging

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Cisco

8.42

8.51

5

4

-1

Microsoft Graph (Teams)

8.52

8.48

4

5

1

Exchanges

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

ZB.com

8.53

9.19

23

7

-16

Gemini

9.19

9.61

9

2

-7

Coinone

9.1

9.19

11

8

-3

Bancor Network

8.31

8.39

29

27

-2

Bitrrex

9.05

9.08

14

12

-2

LA Token

9.06

9.1

13

11

-2

HitBTC

8.73

8.72

20

21

1

Coin Metrics

9.44

9.57

2

3

1

OKEx

9.41

9.46

3

4

1

Coinpaprika

8.86

8.89

19

20

1

Binance US

9.21

9.18

8

9

1

KuCoin

9.32

9.29

5

6

1

Coincheck

9.35

9.31

4

5

1

Gate.io

8.94

8.91

17

19

2

BitMEX

8.41

7.64

27

29

2

Coinbase

8.96

8.93

15

17

2

Kraken

9.07

9.04

12

14

2

Huobi Global

8.64

8.58

21

23

2

bitFlyer

9.11

9.05

10

13

3

Bitfinex

9.24

9.14

7

10

3

Bitstamp

9.32

9.04

6

15

9

Fintech

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Stripe (Sandbox)

9.44

9.49

3

2

-1

Wise APIs (Sandbox)

9.54

9.52

2

1

-1

Yapily

8.74

8.84

9

8

-1

Plaid (Sandbox)

8.78

8.76

8

9

1

Tink

9.55

9.42

1

3

2

GGV Capital API-First

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Stripe

8.36

9.41

24

2

-22

Modern Treasury

9.02

9.24

9

4

-5

Gretel

8.53

8.8

22

18

-4

Alchemy

8.88

9.05

13

10

-3

Radar

8.78

8.9

17

15

-2

Belvo

8.72

8.83

19

17

-2

Fidel API

8.35

8.51

25

24

-1

Deepgram

8.0

7.92

29

28

-1

Persona

7.95

7.84

30

29

-1

Mapbox

9.1

9.16

7

6

-1

Courier

8.59

8.68

20

21

1

Mux

9.3

9.21

4

5

1

Codat

8.92

9.0

12

13

1

Unit

8.82

8.84

15

16

1

Shippo

9.01

9.05

10

11

1

Stedi

8.07

7.84

28

30

2

Daily

9.17

9.12

5

7

2

Stytch

8.95

8.95

11

14

3

Plaid

8.57

8.47

21

25

4

Alpaca

8.78

8.7

16

20

4

Truelayer

8.73

8.67

18

22

4

Duffel

8.84

8.8

14

19

5

MessageBird

9.12

9.02

6

12

6

Algolia

9.34

9.07

2

9

7

IP Geolocators

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

ipwhois

9.38

9.45

2

1

-1

ipdata

9.49

9.43

1

2

1

Open Banking UK Open Data

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

NatWest Group

9.73

9.69

3

2

-1

Danske Bank

9.73

9.47

2

3

1

Open Banking UK Production

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Capital One

8.62

9.15

23

11

-12

Allied Irish Bank (GB)

9.15

9.67

15

4

-11

Tesco Bank

8.49

8.89

25

19

-6

Barclays Business

6.91

8.24

31

26

-5

Cumberland Building Society

8.77

9.01

21

16

-5

Bank of Scotland

9.02

9.09

19

14

-5

Halifax

8.9

9.02

20

15

-5

HSBC Bank (Personal)

9.12

9.15

17

13

-4

Monzo Bank

9.2

9.21

12

9

-3

Virgin Money

9.25

9.31

11

8

-3

HSBC Bank (Business)

8.49

8.61

26

23

-3

Danske Bank (Personal)

9.44

9.51

9

6

-3

Barclays Personal

7.02

8.11

30

27

-3

NatWest Production

9.16

9.15

14

12

-2

NewDay - Amazon Mastercard

9.8

9.78

3

1

-2

Lloyds Bank

9.02

8.99

18

17

-1

Cashplus Bank

7.56

7.82

29

28

-1

Nationwide Building Society

9.45

9.49

8

7

-1

Vanquis Bank

8.57

8.49

24

25

1

Revolut

9.82

9.76

1

3

2

Santander

8.14

7.68

27

29

2

Yorkshire Building Society

7.65

7.32

28

30

2

Ulster Bank NI

9.12

8.96

16

18

2

TSB

9.16

8.75

13

21

8

Creation Cards

9.5

8.8

7

20

13

Bank of Ireland (UK) Plc

9.59

8.58

6

24

18

Tide Platform Ltd

9.74

5.66

4

31

27

Open Banking UK Sandboxes

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Allied Irish Bank Sandbox

9.33

9.38

3

2

-1

RBS Sandbox

8.86

8.86

4

3

-1

Bank of Ireland Sandbox

9.4

8.52

2

4

2

PSD2 Institutions

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Search

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Bing

9.05

9.07

3

2

-1

DuckDuckGo

9.05

8.97

2

3

1

Social

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Tumblr

9.48

9.46

5

4

-1

Flickr

9.49

9.45

4

5

1

UK Government

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Met Office

8.98

9.28

2

1

-1

Police.UK

8.79

8.76

3

2

-1

DEFRA

9.1

8.49

1

3

2

US Government

Project

Current CASC Score

Previous CASC Score

Current Rank

Previous Rank

Change

Veterans Affairs

8.57

9.15

10

3

-7

Bureau of Labor Statistics

8.91

9.31

6

2

-4

FEC

8.95

9.07

5

4

-1

Renewable Energy Laboratory

8.89

8.94

7

6

-1

FCC

8.82

8.9

8

7

-1

FDA

7.67

7.82

11

10

-1

Data.gov

9.18

9.0

3

5

2

Dept of Justice

9.18

8.33

2

8

6

NASA

9.09

7.76

4

11

7

See what your APIs look like from the outside.

APIContext gives engineering, product, and customer success teams a shared view of API reliability, conformance, and customer impact — without rebuilding dashboards.

Start free