API platforms consist of software tools and integrations that allow development teams to manage the complete API lifecycle. These solutions provide the necessary functionalities for API development, as well as for API management and governance.
In the design stage, API platforms allow users to plan, mock, test, create, and make changes to APIs in a secure development environment. These tools help handle the pre-production management for APIs by enabling developers to ideate, set design guidelines, and ultimately build APIs under one dashboard. From there, API platforms give users the tools to monitor, control, and monetize their APIs in a secure development environment. These tools then help administrators monitor connection consistency, traffic, errors, and security for their team’s published APIs.
To qualify for inclusion in the API Platforms category, a product must:
Provide native tools to design and develop APIs
Allow parallel development and team-wide visibility throughout the design process
Enable mocking for API prototyping
Offer security, traffic, and functionality monitoring
Equip teams with operations and monetization tools