2022 State of the API Report

What does "API-first" mean to API developers and professionals? The industry as a whole appears to favor this definition: defining and designing APIs and underlying schema before developing dependent APIs, applications, or integrations. The next favorite? Almost three out of every 10 developers and API professionals preferred the definition of developing APIs before developing applications or integrations dependent on APIs.

Teams and organizations continue to embrace an API-first philosophy. Two-thirds of this year's survey respondents again ranked themselves as a five or higher in terms of embracing API-first. A select few lead the way: 8% ranked themselves as 9 or 10 on the scale of embracing API-first.

We refer to these respondents as “API-first leaders.” They report spending 76% of their development efforts on APIs, compared with 51% for all respondents.

We asked respondents to identify the top priorities for their development teams and organizations, and quality remained the clear winner, coming in at 80%. Agility, reliability, security, and speed of development were also important to more than half of respondents. What seemed to be less of a concern? Reducing costs, cited by less than one-third of API professionals. API-first leaders were even more likely to cite quality, reliability, agility, and security as priorities than other survey respondents.

Respondents were asked to allocate 100 points among three API categories (public, private, and partner) to indicate the percentage of APIs in their organization for each. The leader remains private APIs. Interestingly, API-first leaders reported a lower percentage of private APIs and higher percentage of public APIs, indicating that these leaders spend less time coding functionality in-house when they can rely on functionality already publicly available from others across the industry.

When we asked what factors are considered before integrating with an API, respondents told us performance was the top factor. This just barely edged out last year's number-one pick, security. Reliability and documentation remained among the top four factors. Also notable were scalability and usability.

API-first leaders were more likely than other respondents to cite the top four factors: performance, security, reliability, and documentation.

We asked what factors went into an organization's decision to consume an API, and the top answer this year was a surprise. The number-one choice, by far, was how well an API integrates with internal apps and systems. That's a big change from last year's survey, where internal integration wasn't even among the top three considerations.

This shift comes as companies increasingly use APIs to interact inside the organization, possibly replacing traditional methods like file transfer, database sharing, and email. In the past year, the Postman API Platform has seen the number of integrated APIs across enterprise teams jump twentyfold.

What factors do respondents consider when deciding whether to produce an API? Their top answer was the same as last year: integration with internal apps and systems. But this year, the factor jumped in importance: 83% of respondents selected it, up from 67% last year.

Internal integration rose in importance this year for both producing and consuming APIs. It's a shift that bears watching, as it has implications for API documentation and design, as well as the full development lifecycle.

We asked developers and API professionals their opinion about the benefits of an API-first approach to development. At least 75% of respondents agreed that developers at API-first companies are happier, launch new products faster, eliminate security risks sooner, create better software, and are more productive.