Category Archives: Tutorials

You’re building a new product and are looking for the best data source. Or maybe you need a better API for your current application or service. You have three options — build your own API, use a free public API, or pay for a third-party API. Your use case will likely dictate which option you choose, but to help you decide we’ve broken down all the pros and cons of each API approach — starting with building your own. 

Building an API: Pros & Cons

Organizations usually build their own API when they have the in-house expertise and don’t think they’ll find the customization they need from an external source. However, the investment can quickly become overwhelming if you don’t have a plan and think through the long-term impact. Here are the pros and cons of building an API. 

Pros of Building Your Own API: 

• Customization: By building your own API, you have complete control over its functionality and features. This allows you to tailor it to the specific needs of your business or application.
• Integration: You can build your own API to integrate with other parts of your application or software stack seamlessly. 
• Scalability: With a custom API, you can ensure that it scales with your business needs and can handle increased traffic or usage over time.
• Security: Building your own API allows you to implement security measures specific to your business needs and data.

Cons of Building Your Own API: 

• Cost: Building and maintaining an API requires significant time and resources, which can be expensive.
• Expertise: Building an API requires expertise in software development, web services, and other related fields. If you or your team lacks these skills, you may need to hire additional staff or outsource the work.
• Time to market: Building an API can take a significant amount of time, which may delay the launch of your application or service.
• Maintenance: Once your API is up and running, it will require ongoing maintenance and updates to ensure it stays secure and performs optimally, which can take away from other important activities.

Using a Public API: Pros & Cons

Public APIs allow developers to access data and functionality from other applications without having to build it themselves — for free. Public APIs can certainly be beneficial, but because they’re free, there are usually some serious implications for using them. Here are the pros and cons of using a public API: 

Pros of Using a Public API

• Speed: Public APIs are typically easily accessible –– perfect if you only need an API for a one-off purpose. And this can be a major advantage for start-up businesses that are looking to quickly launch new products or features, but without the cost.
• Flexibility: While a public API may not be flexible in terms of features and functionality, it can be great if you’re looking to test the water with a particular API before you want to make the full investment of building or buying a better option. 
• Cost savings: Using a public API saves you money as you won’t have to pay for the development and maintenance of an API. This can be a significant cost saving if you’re on a tight budget. 

Cons of Using a Public API

• Security risks: Public APIs can be a security risk, as they provide access to data and functionality that could be used to harm businesses or their customers. If you’re a large business, it’s unlikely that a public API will adhere to your privacy standards. 
• Reliability: Public APIs can be unreliable with outages or other disruptions. Often they’re not designed for long-term use and whoever developed them may no longer be maintaining them. This can be a major problem if you plan to rely on a public API to power your product or service.
• Performance issues: Public APIs can suffer from performance issues, such as slow response times or downtime if they don’t have a dedicated team in place to help with support. This can have a significant impact on your user experience and the overall performance of your application.
• Limited control: Using a public API, you’ll have to work with the underlying infrastructure and recognize you won’t be able to customize it. This could also cause more challenges during the integration process. 

Using a Third-Party API: Pros & Cons

Unlike public APIs, third-party APIs are APIs as a product and are provided by companies and organizations for a cost. 

The prevalence of APIs as a product has increased due to the demand for support when it comes to API development and maintenance. Data providers specializing in APIs have more expertise in developing APIs since it’s their core business. As a result, third-party APIs offer many advantages, but there are also some downsides to consider. 

Pros of Using a Third-Party API: 

• Time savings: Using an existing API saves time by allowing developers to reuse resources, rather than building everything from scratch. Developers can focus on the core functionality of their application or service instead of working on maintaining parsers and proxy networks.
• Scalability: Third-party APIs provide access to large datasets that would be difficult, if not impossible, to collect on your own. This data can include anything from SERP results to product prices to reviews and more. And since the API is built as a product, it’s usually able to withstand large volumes of requests. 
• Easy integration: Since third-party APIs are being sold as a product, they have to be able to integrate with a variety of data ecosystems. This can be highly beneficial if you’re working with multiple environments. 
• Better user experience: Third-party APIs can help provide a better user experience by allowing developers to spend less time on the maintenance of the API and more time on creating additional features and content in their applications – which makes their applications more valuable and engaging to users.

Cons of Using a Third-Party API:

• Security risks: Similar to public APIs, not all third-party APIs are built ethically. Some can pose a security risk to both the provider and the user. However, most third-party providers know this is important if they want to be able to charge for their API, so they typically encrypt requests and take other security measures to protect you and your data. 
• Dependency on third parties: Using an existing API means you depend on a third party to provide the service. If the provider goes out of business or decides to change the terms of their API, this could have a significant impact on your application and business.
• Limited control: Like public APIs, using a third-party API you have limited control over the underlying infrastructure. This means that you may not be able to customize the API to meet your specific needs, and you may be limited in terms of the functionality you can provide to your users.

Ultimately, the decision to build an API will depend on your business needs, budget, and resources. If you have a skilled development team who have additional time to commit towards this effort – then you should go for it. However, if you lack the necessary expertise, time, or resources, it may be more cost-effective to use a third-party API provider.

If you find the task of building your own API too demanding or your current solution isn’t cutting it, we can help. We understand how it feels to be burdened by the expensive, time-consuming process of building your API – or to be left with a public API that’s underperforming when it comes to your needs. We recognize this is a challenging process for businesses to undertake. That’s why we continue to expand and enhance our collection of reliable, robust, real-time APIs.

APIs have become increasingly important to the success of businesses. Many technology products, applications, and systems depend on them to perform their duties. And the number of API requests continues to grow. As a result, poor API performance can slow processes down and impact the user experience — which results in a loss of revenue. 

By measuring your API performance, you can identify areas where it can be improved and ensure that it is meeting the needs of your business or users.

Where APIs Generally Lack In Performance

The most critical aspect of an API is speed — for a few reasons:

• First, a slow API can cause delays for users. When users have to wait for an API to respond, they may become frustrated and abandon the application. 
• Second, a slow API can increase costs for developers. If developers have to wait for APIs to respond, they may have to spend more time and resources building and testing their applications. 
• Third, a slow API can damage the reputation of the company that hosts it. If users have a bad experience with an API, they may be less likely to use the company’s products or services in the future.

It’s also important that an API is reliable and efficient. Any downtime can result in the same negative outcomes as a slow API. While it’s fairly straightforward to measure the speed and reliability of an API, measuring its efficiency is a little more complicated. An efficient API is going to have functionality that supports easy integration and scalability. Here are some steps to get a full understanding of your API’s performance when it comes to speed, reliability, and efficiency. 

How to Measure API Performance

Sites and applications are constantly updated to keep up with new technologies and enhance the user experience. Because applications are constantly evolving, APIs need to be closely monitored and frequently improved to keep up with changes. 

If you’ve been using a third-party API or your own in-house API for the past year or more and haven’t done an evaluation of it, now is the time. Realistically, you should complete these steps every few months to see if your current API program is performing well: 

1. Assess Metrics

Begin by assessing the performance of your API across a variety of metrics. Choose the metrics that are most relevant to your specific needs. You can start with these: 

• CPU Usage
• Memory Usage
• Uptime
• Rate Limits
• Latency
• Errors Per Minute or Error Rate
• Request Per Minute (RPM)

Excessive CPU usage, memory usage, downtime, and errors can mean an issue with the server, system health, or code. 

2. Gather User Feedback

Talk to your users or internal stakeholders who leverage the API and its output. Are they experiencing issues or having trouble using it? Are there gaps in the data? User complaints or inaccuracies in the data may indicate the API is outdated. On the other hand, having to format or modify its output signals an issue with the functionality or efficiency of your API. 

3. Run Performance Testing

Performance testing involves simulating a large number of users accessing your API and measuring how long it takes to respond. This method for measuring API performance is helpful if you want to anticipate potential issues with your API — particularly as API request volume grows and your application needs to scale. 

Keeping tabs on the metrics, user feedback, and performance of your API will make it easier to notice any consistent, significant issues that signal a performance issue. But if you find there is an issue, there are several ways to help improve performance. 

How to Improve API Performance

There are many ways to improve API performance, and some will depend on your specific application. But here are a few tips:

• Use a caching mechanism: Caching saves time by storing frequently accessed data in a temporary location so that it doesn’t have to be retrieved from the database each time.
• Optimize your code: Make sure your code is well-written and efficient. This can help your API to respond more quickly to requests.
• Use a load balancer: A load balancer distributes requests across multiple servers, which can help to improve performance if you have a lot of users.
• Use a content delivery network (CDN): A CDN is a network of servers that are located around the world. When a user requests a resource from your API, the CDN will deliver the resource from the server that is closest to the user. This can help to improve performance if your users are located in different parts of the world.
• Use a monitoring tool: A monitoring tool can help you to track the performance of your API and identify any areas where it can be improved.
• Test your API regularly: Testing your API regularly can help you to identify any performance issues before they affect your users.

By following these tips, you can improve the performance of your API and ensure that it meets the needs of your users. However, if you find the task of maintaining your own API too demanding or your current solution isn’t cutting it, we can help. 

We understand how it feels to be burdened by the expensive, time-consuming process of building your own API – or to be left with a public API that’s underperforming when it comes to your needs. We recognize this is a challenging process for businesses to undertake. That’s why we continue to expand and enhance our collection of reliable, robust, real-time APIs.