Report: APIs responsible for over a quarter of revenue for nearly half of all companies

This is according to Postman’s 2023 State of the API report, which revealed that nearly two-thirds of respondents are generating revenue from their APIs. Of those, 43% generate over a quarter of their company’s revenue through APIs.

Respondents judged the success of APIs by how much revenue they bring in, which is the second measure of success behind usage. 

API users also view price as a top consideration for 47% of respondents when deciding whether or not to integrate with an API. For the past two years it had been at 41% of respondents, and Postman believes this increase is a result of the current economic situation. 

Investment in APIs is also going strong, with 92% of respondents believing investment will rise or stay the same over the next two years, possibly indicating that some believe that the worst of the economic downturn in tech is over. 

There was also an increase in the number of companies who self-identify as “API-first leaders,” which are those who excel in metrics, such as how fast they can produce APIs and how quickly they can recover when APIs go down. In the previous two years only 8% identified this way, compared to 11% this year. 

“The State of the API Report sheds light on the realities of API usage and how APIs are delivering value to modern organizations,” said Abhinav Asthana, co-founder and CEO of Postman. “More companies are adopting an API-first approach to software development, and for the second year in a row, outperforming organizations that haven’t. Beyond the technical advantages, organizations are also seeing a direct impact on their bottom line, reporting their APIs as revenue generators. This outlook, combined with the rising use of AI tools, is fundamentally changing our relationship to software and the way we build it — and APIs are at the center of this shift.”

This year the company added a new category to the survey: generative AI. They found that 60% of respondents are using generative AI. Over half are using it for debugging and over a third use it to write code. 

They also found that API security improved this year for most respondents and the number of security incidents also decreased. However, in certain sectors — automotive, education, and retail — incidents occured at higher than average rates. 

Postman’s State of the API report surveyed over 40,000 tech professionals from companies of varying sizes across different ndustries, including financial, technology, and healthcare.