An API Marketplace is a public hub where API providers publish APIs for both developers and partners.
The Marketplace is equipped with components such as developer and provider portal. Using the platform, the API providers can list the APIs where the buyers can see them and then make API purchases.
In layman’s terms, one can compare an API Marketplace to an e-commerce website such as Amazon. When you want to sell an e-book (similar to an API), you can list it on the site where the viewers can see and purchase it if you like.
Similarly, an API Marketplace enables a provider to list their APIs for sale and also monetize them with the help of different subscription plans. This part is known as the provider portal. The marketplace usually takes care of payment structure, managing the users, code snippets, documenting, and testing the market without investing straight away in an API gateway.
The API Marketplace also is helpful for the developers as the purchasers can find the APIs with collections, categories, and so on. This is known as the developer portal. One can compare the APIs, and see the prices and other essential details before purchasing an API suiting their needs.
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What is the difference between API Marketplace and an API Portal?
API portals use customizations or templates for API management products. These are provided by an API provider which permits the developers to understand and help integrate them.
However, API Marketplaces became more popular. An API marketplace differs from portals where they integrate APO providers into a single view and add-on search functions for developers to browse through an array of APIs.
One of the attractions of using a marketplace is simplicity. Developers can visit the marketplace to cater to a majority of their needs as an API consumer.
This approach is beneficial for API providers as being part of the marketplace, for some providers, deploying it to a marketplace can result in dispensation of the portal altogether.
What benefits can you get from API Marketplaces?
The list of benefits that the providers and the developers can get from an API Marketplace. which are as follows:
For the API providers:
- Get wide exposure as the API can increase the reach of your target audience.
- It enables one to understand the market demand.
- It provides a forum where publishers can get feedback and thereby work on bettering their products.
- API providers offers get relevant guidance on how to publish the APIs along with details about online events.
For the developers:
- Find APIs easily as they have more choices in different categories and can know about different prices.
- The developers can seamlessly browse the marketplace to see the available APIs and browse through their features.
- They can find the API that is successful based on their ranks, tables, and statistics.
- Some forums are also available to help to check the reviews of an API by the other developers. This helps one to form an opinion about the API.
5 Best API Marketplaces
1. RapidAPI
RapidAPI supports millions of developers which can connect to thousands of APIs. It is the leading hub for enterprises.
Your development team, can discover and connect to the APIs, all from a single next generation API platform.
The RapidAPI enterprise hub can easily be customised to match the branding of a company and integrate with internal systems and tooling.
With focus on digital transformation efforts, developers require modern API tools to build digital applications. Rapid API helps provide a unified experience across the lifecycle from developing to testing and then monitoring.
The user can check the performance of the API and look into the current trends in API and also about the usage on its dashboard.
You can add the API by selecting a price and then find the one suitable for you. You can reach unlimited customers and you do not have to pay extra charges.
RapidAPI takes care of the invoices and the bills for the customers. one can get eighty percent of profits on every transaction.
2. Rakuten
This API Marketplace boasts of 1 million-plus developers globally. Rakuten aids in managing, marketing, and selling your API without any problems.
Find and connect with over thousands of APIs. The APIs range from machine learning, SMS, Email, Payment, Food and many more APIs.
Unlock innovation, create new services and products by leveraging existing APIs and services. Increase efficiency with developers resume and connection to APIs rapidly.
Get all your APIs in a single place and accelerate software development. Discover APS and services across the organisation and connect seamlessly with apps.
Rakuten API manages the invoices and the billing of the users. You can upgrade to unlimited API calls without paying more. You can select the plan according to your needs. They charge you a 20 percent fee for every transaction.
3. Prompt API
Prompt API is a curated API where you can discover, test, and publish the APIs in a single place.
It is a curated API marketplace which is highly scalable and offers security to developers. It allows the providers to monetise their APIs via a subscription plan.
The focus in this case is on quality as high-quality APIs are available from developers.
It is a single hub for developers to discover and test APIs and provides a single SDK which can connect to all the APIs available in the marketplace.
4. Saasify
Users can focus on their business and decide on things that are important for the business as Saasify can handle all the SaaS issues, like bills, documents, API gateway, user accounts, and marketing campaigns on your behalf.
One can retain the ownership of the API and also the SaaS business with Saasify. They also provide services to market your API and generate endpoints for the API after you provide API specifications.
The product can be customized with a JSON configuration file.
Sassify lets you handle all features such as user accounts, subscription billing, developer docs to provide a polished marketing site.
Launch a SaaS product by setting up of subscription billing, user accounts, API gateway, developer docs, legal docs, and a marketing site.
5. eBay API
eBay’s Commerce APIs helps to provide great access to the core capabilities that are common with making searches, buying or selling, and other activities of the commercial users.
This is a free API Marketplace and has 177 million monthly users active around the world.
eBay’s Buy APIs can be baled by social sites, merchants, and marketplaces to virtually increase the inventory. It provides an opportunity for 3rd-party developers to expand their potential segments which can offer services to create opportunities for new integrations.
Conclusion
Choosing the right API marketplace will help you improve your apps and in turn improve the ROI of your marketing efforts.
Also Read:
- Best API Monitoring Tools for Your Business
- Best Web Scraping Tools for Data Extraction
- Best SERP API to Scrape Real-time Search Engine Results Data
