---
published: true
layout: post
title: What is an API Product?
tags:
  - Products
  - Business
  - Feedback
  - Monetization
image: >-
  https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/uncle-sam-nyc-people-marketplace.jpeg
---
Words and phrases get tossed around in the API spaces regularly without much clarification, negotiation, and alignment on what they mean. As we engage with teams producing and consuming APIs we regularly encounter situations where someone says something and it means something else. One of these phrases that has been attached to the monetization of publicly available APIs for 3rd-party developers is the phrase API product. To help us clarify, negotiate, and align people we are working with as we shift gears from our vendor API management past, with a collective unbundled future, we wanted to distill down the essence of what an API product is for us.

- Is more than any single application or integration.
- Provides clear value to a known set of consumers.
- Has a sustainable business model with a plan.
- Has an intentional and communicated future state.
- Provides a scalable, reliable, and desirable experience.
- Possesses active producer and consumer feedback loops.

There are many other characteristics people will pile onto this definition, but we find this list captures the essence of what matters the most and sets aside an API product from just an API. API products are larger than any single implementation on top of that API, and are something that is shared across business and engineering stakeholders. Appending the word product to the acronym API isn’t just about charging for public APIs. Adding the product to the acronym brings a whole set of business and people considerations that will speak to the shared future and value an API will provide, and bridges between producers and consumers of an API, but also business and engineering stakeholders.