What Is API Monitoring? 9 Types, Use Cases, Getting Started & More

In the fast-paced world of web development, hitting that “refresh” button and seeing nothing but a spinning wheel can send shivers down your spine. It often means something’s gone wrong behind the scenes. In our interconnected digital environments, APIs are crucial for seamless user experiences. They let different parts of your app talk to each other and connect with outside services. It's crucial to monitor these interactions, especially with front end monitoring tools that help ensure everything loads as expected. In this blog, we’ll explore how API monitoring can help you achieve your goals, whether you want to improve performance or understand how everything works behind the scenes.

One tool that can help you with API monitoring is Alerty's frontend monitoring solution. It can track and measure the performance of your API calls so you can identify and fix issues before they affect your users.

Table of Contents

• What Is An API?
• What Is API Monitoring & What Are The Types?
• Why Is API Monitoring Critical?
• What Are The Primary Use Cases For API Monitoring?
• How API Monitoring Works
• How Can I Monitor An API/Web Service? Getting Started With API Monitoring
• What Are The Key Metrics For Monitoring APIs?
• 3 Common Challenges Of API Monitoring
• 4 API Monitoring Best Practices To Follow
• Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

What Is An API?

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is the intermediary that allows two systems to communicate. Imagine it as a translator who helps two languages understand each other. 

An API offers the rules and definitions for how these interactions happen. Each API comes with its own documentation and specifications, which guide the transfer of information.

Unleashing the Power of Integration

APIs are game-changers. They let you expand capabilities without heavy resource investment. Businesses use APIs in three main ways:

• Integrating with third-party services
• Building internal APIs
• Exposing APIs for external use

This flexibility allows you to enhance functionality and offer more robust solutions.

Maximizing Business Potential

APIs can add significant value to your business, benefiting customers and employees. Understanding what an API endpoint is and how to measure performance is crucial for capturing this value. 

Monitoring tools can help track performance metrics, ensuring your APIs run smoothly and efficiently.

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What Is API Monitoring & What Are The Types?

API monitoring is a watchful guardian over the digital pathways connecting various applications and services. APIs, or application programming interfaces, serve as the essential communication links between apps, allowing them to exchange information seamlessly. 

Picture them as the invisible hands ensuring your food order app smoothly interacts with the restaurant system, delivery service, and payment gateway.

Virtual Assistant

​​But what if an API encounters an issue? This is where API monitoring steps in. These tools track responses by closely observing APIs' performance, availability, and functionality and ensure they meet expected benchmarks. 

Alerts are triggered if an API falters or slows down, enabling developers to act swiftly before users notice any disruption.

API Dependence

With 75% of businesses managing an average of 26 APIs per app, with that number set to rise, it becomes clear how vital API monitoring is. 

Over half of businesses rely on APIs for all their apps, and over half plan to fully integrate APIs into all applications in the coming years. Ensuring seamless performance is key as companies increasingly depend on these digital connectors.

API Impact

A poorly performing or broken API can frustrate users, malfunction apps, and cause businesses financial losses. API monitoring helps fix issues early before they escalate, keeping apps and customers happy.

Exploring the Types of API Monitoring

Modern APIs facilitate complex integrations between systems, apps, and microservices. Even the most advanced APIs require rigorous monitoring practices to maintain long-term efficiency. 

Fortunately, teams can use various strategies to secure the performance and reliability of enterprise APIs.

Uptime Monitoring

Uptime monitoring involves checking an API endpoint regularly to ensure it's accessible and responsive. A system alert is triggered if the API doesn't respond or takes too long. Key metrics include:

• Availability Percentage
• Downtime duration

Service level agreements (SLAs) often specify required uptime percentages, mandating 99.9 percent or higher.

Performance Monitoring

Performance monitoring assesses how quickly and reliably an API responds to requests. It helps identify:

• Inefficiencies
• Network issues
• Server overloads

Metrics like response time, latency, and throughput are typically measured. Performance monitoring can also track error rates, indicating the percentage of requests that lead to errors.

Synthetic Monitoring

Synthetic monitoring mimics user paths through an app. Scripts simulate user scenarios, device types, and locations to evaluate app performance. This allows teams to identify issues before users experience them proactively.

Real User Monitoring (RUM)

Real user monitoring (RUM) observes the experiences of actual users, providing detailed data on

• App performance 
• Functionality

This facilitates more fine-grained decision-making by capturing real-world insights into user experiences.

Validation Monitoring

Validation monitoring verifies an API's behavior by sending test scripts to check for correct:

• Responses
• Data formats
• Status codes

It’s especially useful for identifying issues with multi-step processes or the underlying logic of an API.

Security Monitoring

APIs are among the likeliest targets for cyberattacks, so security monitoring is crucial. It involves:

• Tracking unsuccessful login attempts
• Scanning for anomalies in API call patterns
• Checking for data breaches

Security monitoring often uses encryption and authentication protocols to ensure only authorized users can access API data and to protect against threats like:

• Data theft
• DDoS attacks

Integration Monitoring

Integration monitoring tests interactions between an API and the other apps and systems it communicates with. 

This ensures that all parts of a system work together as expected, identifying issues at interfaces between systems. It’s especially useful within microservices architectures.

Compliance Monitoring

APIs often transmit sensitive data, increasing the need for compliance monitoring. This ensures adherence to relevant privacy and industry standards, such as:

• HIPAA 
• PCI DSS

Teams can track practices like data handling, encryption standards, and access control mechanisms to maintain legal compliance and client trust.

Versioning Monitoring

APIs evolve, adding new features and retiring old ones. Versioning monitoring tracks API changes over time to ensure that updates don't negatively impact applications relying on the API. 

It might involve comparing functionality between:

• Versions
• Tracking adoption rates
• Monitoring error rates related to retired features

Real-Time Monitoring

Regardless of the approach, teams should prioritize real-time monitoring to receive instant feedback and resolve issues before they disrupt service. 

Real-time monitoring often uses dashboards and status pages to provide immediate insights and automate system alerts for managing high-availability or critical workflows.

Why Is API Monitoring Critical?

In today’s tech world, microservices are everywhere. They break down large applications into smaller, manageable parts. While this makes things scalable and efficient, it also adds complexity.

Each microservice communicates through APIs. When one service changes, it can affect others. Monitoring APIs keeps everything running smoothly.

APIs as Products: Why Monitoring Matters

APIs are no longer just internal tools. Many companies now offer them as products to third 

parties. This shift means companies must meet strict performance standards. If an API fails, it can damage customer trust and lead to lost revenue. Monitoring helps catch and fix issues quickly.

The API-First Development Approach

The API-first model builds APIs before the applications that use them. This avoids poorly designed APIs that can’t handle their tasks. Continuous monitoring ensures APIs remain strong and user-friendly throughout development and production.

Looking for a reliable API monitoring solution? Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty’s free APM solution today!

What Are The Primary Use Cases For API Monitoring?

API monitoring is your go-to strategy for ensuring that each request to an API stays healthy over time. This is essential for agile teams that push updates several times a day. Monitoring helps catch errors and performance issues as they arise, allowing for quick fixes before customers feel the sting. 

By regularly testing and analyzing API endpoints, you can track how they behave across different environments and deployment stages. This ensures everything runs smoothly, reducing the risk of bad code reaching production.

Navigating Complex User Journeys

Critical business workflows can become complicated, often involving multiple APIs. A solid API monitoring strategy should allow you to systematically test these complex workflows. 

You can then monitor the results at every step. This approach helps ensure that all systems communicate effectively, providing a seamless user experience. By mimicking real-world scenarios, you can better understand how your APIs perform under stress.

Keeping an Eye on Third-Party APIs

A third-party API might be the culprit if you're troubleshooting an issue and can't find the source. Monitoring these external endpoints can save you from chasing problems beyond your control. 

With the right setup, you can catch issues before they affect your users. This proactive approach can help you manage dependencies more effectively, improving the overall reliability of your applications.

Securing Your APIs Against Threats

Security should be a top priority for any API. Monitoring for vulnerabilities is a key part of maintaining a secure environment. By configuring and running security checks in:

• Development
• CI/CD pipelines
• Production

You can catch potential threats before they become a problem. This continuous monitoring approach can help you identify and address vulnerabilities early, reducing the risk of data breaches and other security incidents.

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How API Monitoring Works

API monitoring ensures everything is running smoothly. Are your APIs responding correctly and quickly? Monitoring tools check availability and can alert you if something goes wrong. 

When applications depend on each other, a hiccup in one can disrupt others. You can find and fix these issues by tracking availability before they affect users.

Speed Matters: Performance Monitoring

APIs might be working, but are they fast enough? Monitoring tools measure response times and flag sluggishness. 

They help you optimize performance by analyzing HTTP response codes and checking for consistent performance across different environments. If performance dips, you’ll know right away.

Accuracy Counts: Data Validation

Getting a response from an API isn’t enough; it has to be accurate. Monitoring tools ensure data is correct and formatted properly, which is crucial for multi-step processes. If something’s off, these tools will alert you so you can fix it before it affects users.

Keep an Eye on Third-Party Integrations

Many applications rely on third-party APIs. Monitoring tools give you visibility into the performance of these external services. You’ll know whether to contact your partners or team to resolve the issue if something goes wrong.

Stay Compatible with Feature Changes

APIs can change; when they do, your application might need updates to stay compatible. Monitoring tools alert you to changes in functionality so you can ensure your app continues to work smoothly with external services.

Guarding Against Security Threats

APIs can be a security risk, especially if improperly maintained. Monitoring tools watch for suspicious behavior and notify you of potential breaches. This helps keep your network secure and protects against threats from other connected APIs.

How Can I Monitor An API/Web Service? Getting Started With API Monitoring

Getting started with API monitoring can feel overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be. Begin by researching software and hardware vendors specializing in API monitoring. 

These vendors offer tools to help you effectively manage the APIs your website or application depends on for critical data or processes. Follow your organization’s request for proposal (RFP) process to find the best fit.

Focus on Critical APIs

Not all APIs are created equal. Some are essential for your operations, while others are less critical. Prioritize monitoring APIs that your website or native application rely on for critical data or processes. Consider APIs you manage that customers, end users, or developers rely on for data or processes.

Test for Availability and Response Time

Once you’ve identified the APIs you want to monitor, it’s time to start testing. Begin by checking the API endpoint's availability.

• Is it up and running, or is it returning an error? 
• Measure the response time. 
• How quickly is the API returning responses? 
• Is the response time degrading over time? 
• Is it worse in production than in pre-production?

Validate the Data

Testing isn’t just about availability and response time. You also need to validate the data the API is returning. 

• Is it in the correct format? 
• Is it the right data? 
• Data validation is crucial for ensuring that your applications function correctly.

Monitor Multi-Step Processes

API monitoring isn’t just about testing individual endpoints. Many APIs are used in multi-step processes, such as authentication or transaction completion. Ensure that these processes work as expected.

• Can you save and reuse a variable from the API? 
• Does authentication work correctly? 
• Can you complete a transaction with data from the API?

Collaborate with Your Team

API monitoring is a team effort. Work with your developers and other stakeholders to identify which APIs are critical and what tests must be performed. Encourage open communication and collaboration to ensure your API monitoring strategy is effective.

Stay Flexible

API monitoring is not a set-it-and-forget-it process. It requires ongoing attention and adjustments as your applications and APIs evolve. Stay flexible and be willing to adapt your monitoring strategy as needed.

What Are The Key Metrics For Monitoring APIs?

As part of API monitoring, any good dashboard should include checkups for availability (connectivity), correctness, and performance. Among those, here are the key API metrics you should always measure:

Application API metrics

Application-specific metrics give insight into how well your application performs independently of other metrics. These are good metrics for website benchmarks and are worth tracking over longer periods.

1. Requests Per Minute (RPM)

Requests per minute (RPM) is a performance metric that measures the number of requests your API will handle per minute. While this can change depending on the day of the week or even the time, RPM is the average number of requests.

2. Latency

Network latency is the time it takes for data or a request to travel from the source to the destination. It is measured in milliseconds. 

The closer your latency is to zero, the better. If your latency is high your whole website will suffer and in return, this will negatively impact your user’s experience.

3. Failure Rate

Your APIs will fail, it’s not a matter of if but rather when, so it’s important to note how many times these happen. Knowing if an API, especially an external one, can fail helps you decide on a course of action that can lead you to create certain fallback scenarios or switch the service provider altogether.

Infrastructure API metrics

Your APIs will depend heavily on how well your infrastructure is set up and performs. Keeping that in mind, there are a few very important API metrics you should watch out for to ensure your APIs are performing as they should.

4. API Uptime

API uptime lets you check if you can successfully send a request to the API endpoint and get a response with the expected HTTP status code. 

This is usually calculated based on the number of minutes or hours the server is available during a selected period.

5. Time to First Hello World

TTFHW will be obvious to most developers since, more often than not, the first expression you write in a new programming language will output the text hello world. 

In this scenario, the Time to first hello world refers to the time the user needs to make his first API transaction since landing on your web page.

6. Memory & CPU Usage

It’s essential to measure the impact your APIs have on your servers. The two most crucial API infrastructure metrics to watch out for are CPU and memory usage. High CPU usage can mean the server is overloaded, which can cause severe bottlenecks.

Memory usage helps you understand the amount of resource utilization. Based on these two, you can either decide to downgrade your machine or VM, saving a few bucks, or upgrade to ease the stress you put in and to avoid causing a bottleneck.

3 Common Challenges Of API Monitoring

1. The Black Box Challenge

Picture this: you’ve got an application or microservice locked up tight, protecting its secret sauce. Sometimes, these systems don’t have an API at all. Other times, the API they do offer barely scratches the surface. You’re left trying to monitor performance with a blindfold on. 

This black box scenario can make API monitoring a real headache. Monitoring tools need to pull back the curtains, but they can’t if there’s nothing to grab onto. You’ll need creative solutions, like synthetic monitoring or reverse engineering, to get the required data.

2.  Siloed Data Dilemma

APIs are meant to connect everything, but what happens when the data on either end speaks different languages? Imagine trying to connect two devices that spew data in their unique formats. APIs can hit a wall here. 

They can’t do their job until those differences are ironed out. If not addressed, this issue can bog down performance and lead to errors. To get everything on the same page, you'll need middleware or transformation solutions.

3. System Performance Pitfalls

API monitoring is meant to help, not hurt. Some monitoring solutions can degrade system performance. They might be too resource-intensive or interfere with the API’s regular operation, slowing everything down and creating more problems than it solves. 

When choosing an API monitoring solution, you’ll want one that works quietly in the background without getting in the way. It should be lightweight and efficient so it can monitor things without causing a commotion.

4 API Monitoring Best Practices To Follow

1.  Beyond the API Perimeter: Monitor Supporting Infrastructure

It's easy to focus solely on API endpoints, but remember, problems often originate elsewhere. Your APIs will suffer if your database or network is overwhelmed. 

Extend your monitoring to the entire stack. This way, you're not just firefighting—you’re preventing the fires in the first place.

2.  Trends Tell a Story: Look for Historical Patterns

Short-term fixes are great, but what about the bigger picture? Historical monitoring data can reveal long-term trends that guide better decision-making. Spotting patterns in latency or error rates helps you understand the underlying issues before they become crises.

3.  Alert the Troops: Automate Notifications

If you’re manually checking on your APIs, you’re already behind. Automate alerts to your communication tools so your team can act when something goes wrong. This proactive approach ensures issues are tackled before they escalate.

4.  Evolving Needs: Revisit and Revise Regularly

Your API monitoring strategy can’t be a set-it-and-forget-it deal. Both business needs and technology evolve constantly. Regularly revisiting and updating your approach ensures it stays relevant and practical, keeping your APIs healthy and your users happy.

Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's Free APM Solution

Have you ever had a code deployment go sideways? Alerty is like your calm friend who steps in during chaos. It’s built for developers and early-stage startups who need reliable cloud monitoring. With application performance monitoring (APM), database monitoring, and incident management, it's got your back. 

Think of it as your digital assistant, ensuring your app's health across technologies like:

• NextJS
• React
• Vue
• Node.js

Database Monitoring

You’ll always know what's happening with your databases, too. Alerty monitors:

• Supabase
• PostgreSQL
• RDS, keeping tabs on CPU usage and memory consumption

It's not just about spotting issues, it's about stopping them before they mess with user experience. You can dive into Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize every interaction, and its Universal Service Monitoring has you covered for critical dependencies like:

• Stripe API
• OpenAI
• Vercel

Incident Management: Quick and Painless

You know that moment when you realize something’s wrong and scramble to figure out what? With Alerty, incident management is more like a stroll than a sprint. Its seamless interface helps you spot and tackle incidents fast so you can get back to what matters, building awesome stuff. 

The integration with tools like Sentry makes it even easier. No more wrestling with alerts or digging for details. You get a clear view of what's up, allowing you to address issues before they spiral. Just in case, it's like having a fire extinguisher right next to your desk.

Real User Monitoring: Keep Users Happy

Nothing beats a smooth user experience. With Real User Monitoring (RUM), Alerty lets you see how users interact with your application. It’s about ensuring every click, swipe, and scroll feels right. 

RUM tracks user sessions and gives you insights into performance so you can fine-tune everything from load times to responsiveness. Happy users stick around, and Alerty helps you keep them that way. You’re not just guessing what’s working.

Universal Service Monitoring: All Your Dependencies in One Place

Your app relies on lots of services. If one of them goes down, you need to know ASAP. That’s where Alerty’s Universal Service Monitoring comes in. It keeps an eye on all your critical services, like:

• Stripe API
• OpenAI
• Vercel, so you’re never caught off guard. It's like having a security guard for your dependencies

You’ll get alerts the moment something looks off, letting you address it before it affects users. With Alerty, you’re always in control.

AI-Powered Setup: No Sweat

Setting up monitoring shouldn’t feel like pulling teeth. Alerty uses AI to make the process as smooth as possible. It guides you through setup so you’re up and running quickly. 

No more wrestling with complex configurations or spending hours reading docs. Alerty’s AI does the heavy lifting so you can focus on what you do best—coding. It's like having a personal trainer for your monitoring setup, helping you get everything right.

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