Top 30 APIs for best developer experience

Kyle Calica

June 8, 2023

An API should be easy to understand, intuitive, and well-documented. It should provide clear and concise instructions for developers to integrate the API with their applications, and there should be comprehensive support resources in case of any issues. Since the Postman team helps and sees developers interact with web services every day, I compiled the most popular 30 APIs based on developer experience and feedback.

This list of APIs is based on three principles:

• Functionality: How much does your API reflect your service offerings?
• Usability: How easy is your API to work with?
• Experience: How is the developer’s experience with your API and services?

Functionality can be easily seen in API-first companies, where the APIs drive a software organization’s services. Usability can be broken down into time to first to call (TTFC), authentication, authorization, and onboarding. Experience is based on documentation clarity, support, and an active community.

I went through some of today’s most popular APIs and based the list on the criteria above after doing the following with each API:

1. I tried to set up and send a first call.
2. I reviewed documentation.
3. I checked out each company’s developer communities.
4. I reviewed how support is provided.

Here are the top 30 APIs listed in no particular order. Click on each company name to start using their corresponding APIs, and let us know which ones are your favorite to work with:

• Stripe API: Stripe is one of the largest API-first companies providing access to their financial platform. As an API-first company, their documentation and community are developer-centric, paving a straightforward integration path.
• Slack APIs: Slack APIs extend the platform’s functionality and make an extensive ecosystem through it. Slack’s ability to extend so much of its app using its API creates a rewarding experience for any developer.
• Plaid: Plaid API is another API-first company providing an open banking platform to connect different banks to apps. Being developer-centric and with effective getting-started guides that make integrating with users’ banks easier, they rank high for developer experience.
• Salesforce: Salesforce’s Trailhead is a great way to get started with their Salesforce Platform APIs and provides a clear path to making your first-time call fast.
• Klaviyo: Klaviyo has an extensive API for SMS and email marketing. Their documentation provides clear step-by-step instructions for getting started with their APIs.
• Zoom API: Zoom’s API is a great interface for integrating meetings with applications.
• Svix: Svix is another API-first company for creating and integrating webhooks into modern apps. Svix makes managing webhooks easy with their dashboard, and with APIs being the main driver for using their platform, first-time calls are fast.
• PayPal: The PayPal REST API is organized around transaction workflows, including orders, payments, subscriptions, invoicing, and disputes. The API is extensive and organized, making it easy for a developer to integrate PayPal.
• Twilio API: Twilio allows developers to interact with most communication technology. As an API-first company, Twilio provides extensive documentation and a thriving community. Plus, the ability to use telecommunications through API calls is way too rad!
• Lob: Lob API provides access to their intelligent, direct mail platform. You can even trigger physical mail campaigns. It’s an intensive API for developers to interact with digital and paper mail campaigns.
• Notion API: Notion’s API connects pages and databases to the tools you use every day, creating powerful workflows.
• Datadog: Datadog API is easy to get started with from their docs. Quickly make your first call using their Postman Public Workspace.
• Dropbox: Dropbox API is not only an easy document storage platform to work with,  but it is extensive. This API comes with many useful endpoints for its own functionality—my favorite being the save endpoint, which lets you save_url a document hosted at a URL. Very convenient for serverless interactions.
• Discord API: Discord API is large and allows many touchpoints and ways to interact with its system. The Discord bot community is large for a reason!
• Sendgrid: SendGrid API allows developers to pull important data from emails, like contact lists, statistics, and reports. Another API-first company with an amazing dashboard and support team.
• Jira APIs: Jira APIs allow developers to interact with Jira Server to create tickets and trigger workflows. A very helpful API for developers who may want to track issues and more.
• ConvertKit: ConvertKitAPI is a very easy and straightforward API to create email campaigns and add subscribers. From tagging to uploading an HTML email, it’s one of the best email marketing APIs.
• OpenAI API: OpenAI API is probably one of the most popular APIs right now for general-purpose AIs.
• Pinterest: Pinterest API provides an interface for the Pinterest platform. The API is extensive and provides interfaces to their ads, content, and users.
• MongoDB API: MongoDB is one of the most popular NoSQL databases and comes with its own API for CRUD operations and more.
• Snowflake: Snowflake is a data cloud platform with an API for creating custom integrations. As a data warehouse solution, having an easy to use API is vital to their business.
• Spotify Web APIs: Spotify Web APIs allow developers to interact with Spotify’s streaming service, look up artists, track information, and have access to user accounts.
• Gremlin: Gremlin API allows developers to create chaos experiments for SaaS platforms.
• Zendesk: Zendesk is a support platform with an API for developers to integrate or create custom applications on top of.
• Google Docs API: Google Docs API is a powerful interface to the Google Docs platform. Extensive and pretty easy to interact with, this can really empower developers to share and collaborate by creating workflows.
• ZohoCRM API: ZohoCRM API provides access to Zoho CRM modules to create integrations.
• Unstoppable: Unstoppable Domains lets you search, manage, and pay for domains.
• HubSpot: HubSpot APIs allow developers to create integrations and extend applications on their CRM platform.
• Bitly: Bit.ly allows you to create shortened links and keep track of them. Use their API to create and pull helpful stats on links. Very easy to get started with.

Schedule a meeting with our team here to improve your API’s developer experience!