API performance is, to put not too fine a point on it, everything. The whole world runs on APIs.
If your APIs are slow, or non-functioning, or error-prone, then you’re going to lose time, money and customers. It’s as simple as that.
That’s why we here at APImetrics believe in the importance of API performance monitoring, governance, compliance and security. And it’s also why, each week, we highlight the many ways an API can stumble. Because no one thinks about APIs until there’s a problem – and then it’s too late.
One of our perennial highlights looks a lot like this one, which shows last week’s API performance from the US Department of Energy. It’s been like this for months. As usual, this was owing to a continuing high percentage of slow outliers throughout the week with some HTTP status code 504 Gateway Timeout responses.
Now, this is not the API for, say, nuclear weapons or something earth-shattering. But somewhere in the US of A there are people trying to get information, or a service, or something that they’re simply not able to access. We’ve named and shamed them many times now, and no one seems to notice.
And that’s not good!
Across the pond, we have another government entity that has stumbled, albeit for the first time since we started monitoring their API performance. Police.UK in the UK Government collection decreased by 19% from 9.06 (in the Green Zone) to 7.37 (in the Yellow Zone).
This was owing to an increased number of slow outliers affecting most of the endpoints through most of the week.
Next up we have a Fintech API performance problem – again, not earth-shattering, but the entire Fintech industry runs on APIs, so you’d think this would have raised alarms.
The WDNB currency APIs in the Fintech category decreased by 24% from 8.82 (in the Green Zone) to 6.74 (in the Yellow Zone). This was owing to a number of clusters of slow outliers (with some HTTP status code 503 Service Unavailable responses) affecting all endpoints.
Other API Performance Highlights
- 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, up from 9.81 last week.
- Contentful in the GGV Capital API-First category is the fastest API again this week with an average latency of 51 ms, down from 53 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 9.28, down from 9.31 last week.
- Dept of Energy in the US Government category is the overall worst performing API again this week with a CASC score of 3.82, up from 3.67 last week.
- 9 categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.50 or more, down from 10 last week.
- 15 categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more, the same as last week.
- 1 category has a bottom API with a CASC score of 9.00 or more, the same as last week.
- 6 categories have a bottom API with a CASC score of 8.00 or more, down from 7 last week.
- 4 APIs (Barclays Personal Sandbox in the Open Banking UK Sandboxes collection with a CASC score of 5.63, Data.gov in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 3.93, Dept of Energy in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 3.82, NASA in the US Government collection with a CASC score of 5.15) are in the Red Zone with a CASC score of less than 6.00 this week, up from 2 last week.
