Something of interest in this week’s API metrics
Corporate Infrastructure is a pretty competitive API metrics category, with all APIs in the Green Zone and 9 out of 19 having a CASC score of over 9.00.
If we look at outliers, we see there is a pretty large between the best performer, GitHub, with just 0.48% outliers, which comes top overall in terms of CASC score, and Pager Duty with 4.87% outliers – ten times as many. The seven best APIs in terms of outliers all have a CASC API metrics score of 9.18 or higher.

We can see that though there are variations between regions, GitHub is pretty consistent within regions. There is only a 19 ms variation in Europe and 16 ms one in South America, the slowest region. Consistency is the goal and if you can achieve that you will get a good CASC score.

PagerDuty is a slower API overall, but there is also a lot more variation in latency: 187 ms in Europe, 314 ms in South America. North America has a variation of 116 ms. For GitHub, only East Asia has a bigger variation than that at 177 ms.
We see here the difference between a good API and a very good one. And this is why you need to be actively monitoring your APIs from the locations your users are using them from.
You want to be quick everywhere, but you – and your users – also want you to have consistent API metrics.

API Metrics: Tops in Overall Quality
Week Ending 9 February 2021
Category | Organization | CASC score
|
Corporate
| GitHub | 9.61 |
COVID-19 | 9.56 | |
Search
| Google | 9.45 |
Social Networks
| 9.60 | |
UK Government
| GOV.UK | 9.71 |
US Government
| Department of Justice | 9.87 |
Messaging APIs
| Nexmo (API) | 9.28 |
Department of Justice in the US Government category takes the overall API metrics title this week with a CASC score of 9.87.
A CASC score of over 9.00 is very good and one of 9.50 or more exceptional. Five of the seven categories are headed by organizations with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week, up from 2 last week.
Four of the seven categories are headed by organizations with a CASC score of 9.50 or more this week, up from two last week.
Sustaining a CASC score of >9.25 over a period of several weeks is a good showing and congratulations to those organizations that achieved it.
This week, all seven categories are topped by an API with a CASC score of 9.28 or more.
API Metrics: Top Performers by Latency
Week Ending 9 February 2021
Category | Organization | Median Latency
|
Corporate
| Microsoft Office | 223 ms |
COVID-19 | WHO | 87 ms |
Search
| Google | 391 ms |
Social Networks
| 57 ms | |
UK Government
| Police.UK | 83 ms |
US Government
| Department of Justice | 46 ms |
Messaging APIs
| Slack | 271 ms |
Department of Justice in the US Government takes the overall title again with a median latency of 46 ms down from 48 ms last week.
An important caveat: medians can be misleading! An API might have a fast median latency but produce many slow outliers. So just being fast isn’t everything. You have to be reliable too if you want to have good API ratings and get a high CASC score!
API Metrics: Worst Quality
Week Ending 9 February 2021
Category | Organization | CASC score
|
Corporate
| Nobody under 8.00!
| |
COVID-19 | 4.95 | |
Search
| Nobody under 8.00! | |
Social Networks
| Nobody under 8.00!
| |
UK Government
| NHS | 6.15 |
US Government
| General Services Administration
| 6.60 |
Messaging
| Twilio
| 7.79 |
Coronavirus COVID19 API (cov19api.com) in the Covid-19 category takes the overall Wooden Spoon this week with a CASC score of 4.95, up from 4.92.
See you again in a week as we steam even further into February. Also don’t forget to look out for our monthly report for January and the weekly and monthly financial API reports. We will also be publishing special reports on the State of the APIs in the 2020, so that’s something else to look forward to!
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