2023 State of the API Report

Postman State Of The API Report Postmanauts researching ontop of graphs. Illustration.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Key findings Global growth of APIs Who works with APIs A day, week, or year in the life API-first and other strategies Executing on APIs APIs and monetization APIs and generative AI Tooling for APIs and development API technologies The outlook for APIs and more Methodology How to share the report Download the report

API technologies

Architectural style: SOAP slips

While REST remains the most-used API architecture by far, it has lost a bit of ground to newcomers. This year, 86% of respondents said they used REST, down from 89% last year and 92% the year prior.

SOAP registered a notable drop. It was used by just 26% of all respondents this year versus 34% last year. The decline makes SOAP the fourth most-used architecture in our survey, down from the third spot last year.

GraphQL took SOAP's spot and was used by 29% of survey-takers.

REST: 86%

Webhooks: 36%

GraphQL: 29%

SOAP: 26%

Websockets: 25%

gRPC: 11%

MQTT: 9%

AMQP: 9%

Server-Sent Events: 6%

EDI: 4%

EDA: 3%

Multiple choices allowed.

Specifications: JSON Schema holds the lead

We also asked folks which API specifications they use and love. JSON Schema remains the top pick, named by almost twice as many respondents as any other. Swagger/Open API 2.0 and Open API 3.x were the next most popular choices, almost evenly tied.

Never heard of it

Aware but don't use it

Use it

Use it and love it

Multiple choices allowed.

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