What is an API Marketplace? Technical topics explained simply (2024)

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What is an API Marketplace? Technical topics explained simply? ›

An API marketplace is the key to taking your API strategy to the next level. It brings together all your APIs, packaged and ready to go. It gives you better tools to solve issues around governance, security, productization, and monetization.

An API marketplace allows API providers to publish APIs so developers can discover them. The marketplace also allows providers to monetize their APIs, usually by creating a subscription plan (or a variety of different subscription plans). There is another big benefit for providers who list their API on a marketplace.

API stands for Application Programming Interface. In the context of APIs, the word Application refers to any software with a distinct function. Interface can be thought of as a contract of service between two applications.

An API marketplace caters towards both API consumers and providers since it allows consumers to connect and discover APIs, and allows providers to expose their APIs. In comparison, an API gateway is more specifically geared towards a creator of an API.

“APIs are computers sitting in various places. Each computer has an address. If we know the address, we can contact the computer and use the service.”

APIs serve as a software intermediary, allowing two applications to talk to each other. However, they can also do much more. APIs allow two software applications to communicate using pre-established rules and protocols. The API serves as a software interface for the two different applications that need to communicate.

To put it in simple terms, as computers can't talk to each other, API integrations is the feature that allows computers to tell each other what to do. Or in tech terms, it's the connection between two or more applications via their APIs that let systems exchange data sources.

An API gateway is a way to decouple the client interface from your backend implementation. When a client makes a request, the API gateway breaks it into multiple requests, routes them to the right places, produces a response, and keeps track of everything.

An API gateway is a component of the app-delivery infrastructure that sits between clients and services and provides centralized handling of API communication between them. It also delivers security, policy enforcement, and monitoring and visibility across on-premises, multi-cloud, and hybrid environments.

What is API testing in simple words? ›

API testing is a type of software testing that involves testing application programming interfaces (APIs) directly and as part of integration testing to determine if they meet expectations for functionality, reliability, performance, and security. Since APIs lack a GUI, API testing is performed at the message layer.

Public API examples include social media bots, third-party login, e-commerce transactions, and weather apps. Private API examples include streaming services, ensuring media compatibility on various devices, and financial apps that connect different aspects of managing finances in a bank.

Here are some API monetization examples: Pay-per-use: Each API call is a separate charge. This can also be extended to data where you charge per MB of data used. This is the most straightforward approach, but it works best for API providers that are already established as digital product vendors.

There are many ways and API ideas to make money. APIs make it easy to develop monetization strategies for them. There are many ways to make money out of them; one simply has to understand them and know how to execute them correctly.

An API (also known as a property application programming interface) refers to an intermediary technology that transfers data between a data-producing application and another application. A real estate data API typically transfers real estate data from the MLS to a real estate application or website.

The AWS Marketplace Catalog API service provides an API interface to manage AWS Marketplace for your AWS organization or AWS account. For approved sellers, you can manage your products programmatically, including the self-service publishing capabilities on the AWS Marketplace Management Portal .