500 Web APIs

from ProgrammableWeb by John Musser

With this week’s addition of Google’s latest APIs we now have an even 500 APIs cataloged. Over the past two years this list has grown 10 fold from the original 50 we had listed in 2005. And connected to these are 2250 mashups built using hundreds of API combinations.

Using our Top APIs for Mashups pie chart you get a sense of which APIs have been mostly frequently used in our mashup sample with the top 10 APIs being Google Maps, Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, VirtualEarth, Yahoo Maps, eBay, 411Sync, del.icio.us and Yahoo. You can get a sense of this by viewing our directory of APIs by Mashup Count.

If you view them sorted by category here’s the breakdown of those categories with the most competing APIs (top 20 categories):

• Mapping: 48 APIs
• Internet: 28 APIs:
• Reference: 27 APIs
• Shopping: 23 APIs
• Search: 21 APIs
• Music: 19 APIs
• Photos: 16 APIs
• Messaging: 16 APIs
• Telephony: 14 APIs
• Security: 12 APIs
• Financial: 12 APIs
• Government: 11 APIs
• Email: 11 APIs
• Blogging: 10 APIs
• Bookmarks: 10 APIs
• News: 9 APIs
• Video: 9 APIs
• Chat: 9 APIs
• Office: 8 APIs
• Advertising: 7 APIs

If you want to get a sense of which major providers offer the most APIs, check API Scorecard.