2020 State of the API Report

When respondents were asked which API tools they use, Postman came out on top, garnering mentions from 94.5% of responses. SwaggerHub was the only other tool earning above single digits, with 23.3%. SmartBear (8.8%), Mulesoft (7.6%), and Insomnia (7.6%) rounded out the top five.

API-first leaders were more likely to mention Postman and SwaggerHub than others. Respondents with 6+ years of API development experience were more likely to mention Postman, SwaggerHub, and SmartBear than those with 0–5 years of experience.

We asked respondents whether they prefer a single platform or a mix of tools to design, document, test, and deliver APIs. A combination of both was the most popular answer, garnering more than 50% of the responses.

Respondents with 6+ years of API development experience were more likely to report using a combination than those with 0–5 years of experience.

We asked survey-takers about the types of tools they use to produce APIs. Coding/programming tools (87.6%) received twice as many mentions as the next most popular, automated testing (43.1%). Code review tools were the third most popular at 38.7%.

The remainder of the tools mentioned were primarily API-specific tools. Interestingly, respondents with 6+ years of API development experience were more likely to report using coding/programming tools to produce APIs than those with 0–5 years of experience.

We also asked survey-takers about the types of tools they use to consume APIs. Mentions of coding/programming tools dwarfed all other API consumption tools, with 78%, compared to 30.3% for automated testing, the second-highest. Respondents with 6+ years of API development experience were also more likely to report using coding/programming tools to consume APIs than those with 0–5 years of experience.

DevOps practitioners rely on a number of tools, with Jenkins standing out and leading the way at 41.3%. AWS DevOps (30.7%) and Azure DevOps (26.1%) registered second and third, respectively. GitHub Actions, GitLab Pipelines, and Bitbucket Pipelines round out the remaining tools that received responses totaling 15% or higher.

API-first leaders and respondents with 6+ years of API development experience were also more likely to mention Jenkins.

Respondents deploying APIs reported using a number of different approaches. CI/CD pipelines were the most popular, at 53.4%, followed by deploying APIs in the cloud.

API-first leaders were more likely to use all of the approaches offered when deploying APIs than others; similarly, respondents with 6+ years of API development experience were more likely to use all of the approaches offered when deploying APIs than those with 0–5 years of experience.