When we first looked at the fastest growing API categories of recent years, Financial and Payments both made the list. We've seen a number of signals that there is great interest in API related to Finance so we decided to take a deeper look at the category's growth this month.

What data formats do API developers turn to when building APIs? Is JSON the dominant format while XML is a relic of the past? What do the data formats tell us about modern APIs? This article looks at our directory data to see what data formats are the most popular choices among API providers.

Which APIs are the most popular with developers? There are a lot of ways to come to an answer; this month we are using our directory data to offer one. Every API in our directory has a track functionality and by looking at the data we can see which APIs our readers have shown the most interest in.

The ProgrammableWeb directory eclipsed the 22,000-API mark in June 2019 and this milestone gives us a chance to look at what the data can tell us about the API economy. The directory has seen new APIs added at a 30% increase over the previous four years signaling that the API economy remains strong.

Which API providers do the best job of giving their developer community the tools needed to quickly get up and running with their APIs? In this analysis of our directory, we show how our data model allows for us to query our database and find out which providers offer the most SDKs and Code Samples.

Which programming language is the most popular with developers? In the past we’ve looked to our directories to provide some insight into which language is most in demand. The recent growth of our SDK and Sample Source Code directories gives us an opportunity to take a fresh look at the data.

While the majority of the APIs within the ProgrammableWeb directory are REST-styled APIs, that isn't the only architectural style in use, not by a long shot. In this article we look at our directory data to see what underlying technologies are most popular across the various Push/Streaming APIs.