State of APIs: growth and more growth on tap for 2023

If you’re wondering whether you need to focus on APIs as part of your digital strategy for 2023, the answer is a resounding yes. Anyone operating in the digital transformation business today also needs to be in the API business. That’s the bold, key takeaway from Rapid’s 4th annual State of APIs Report, which comprised global insights from 850 individuals, including professional developers, to highlight trends in software development and API usage. 

A clear surge in the API economy—roughly 70% of developers surveyed expect to increase API usage this year—confirms the importance of APIs as organizations look to developers to meet enterprise-wide digital goals. Developers, in turn, are increasingly leveraging APIs for speed and operational efficiency. APIs power a wide portion of web, mobile, and desktop apps today and make it easy to adjust, transform, enrich, and consume data. This enables organizations to quickly power up new business opportunities and/or easily improve existing products, systems, and operations. 

So let’s dive into the top trends uncovered in the report that supports the strength of the API economy:

Demand for APIs is strong—and growing 

Everyone, it seems, is jumping on the API bandwagon. Some 70% of developers indicate they will increase API usage this year, while 63% note that they utilized APIs more in 2022 than they did the previous year. As a whole, more than 75% of developers are prioritizing participating in the API economy, or plan to prioritize it soon.

Nearly all organizations with a high-priority project around APIs or microservices agreed that participation in the API economy was important, with the figure being even higher in specific industries, including telecommunications, technology, and financial services.

They also place great emphasis on API Testing, with 90% of developers reporting that they will be testing or are planning to test their APIs. 

Organization size plays a role as well:

• Nearly 40% of the largest companies (those with 10,000+ employees) have more than 250 internal APIs
• Roughly 64% of the smallest companies (those with 1- 50 employees) use up to 10 internal APIs

The rise of third-party and partner facing APIs

Internal APIs remain the most common API type for developers, but more and more are also looking outside their organization for effective and efficient APIs to help drive digital transformation. Survey results show this clearly:

• 75% of developers utilize internal APIs
• 54% of developers are also using third-party APIs (up from 49% in 2021)
• 49% of developers are also using partner-facing APIs (up from 44% in 2021)

Partner facing and third-party API usage both increased by almost 5% in 2022. This percentage change was even greater with partner-facing APIs in industries like technology, which grew by nearly 10%.

The rise in third-party and partner facing APIs is a sign of increasing collaboration and innovation in the business and technology sectors.

Monetizing APIs is becoming the norm

As APIs continue to prove their value and increase their prevalence, businesses are seeking new ways to increase revenue derived from their APIs. The number of organizations monetizing APIs in 2022 is growing:

• Overall, API monetization is up around 5% from previous years
• Within the financial sector, API monetization rose by 16%

TypeScript is having a moment

While JavaScript remains the favorite language for building APIs, TypeScript—a subset of JavaScript, popular for enabling developers to add type safety to their projects—is growing in popularity. It jumped ahead of PHP for the first time, with more developers choosing TypeScript to build APIs than PHP.

The current top-ranked languages for developers are:

1. JavaScript
2. Python
3. Java
4. TypeScript
5. PHP

The 4th annual State of APIs Report comprised insights from more than 850 global developers, engineers, and leaders from across the technology community spanning over 100 countries including the US, the UK, Germany, and India. Read the full 2022 State of APIs Report for additional insights into trends and opportunities within the API economy. 

To find out how to position your company to take part in the growing API economy, contact Rapid.