Developer Tools
API Development & Management
Tools for designing, building, testing, and managing APIs
Overview
API development and management tools help teams design, build, test, document, secure, and monitor APIs. As APIs become the primary interface for software integration, this category has grown into a critical part of the developer toolkit.
Top Players
Postman
- Company: Postman Inc. (USA)
- Market Position: Most popular API development platform (30M+ users)
- Key Strengths: Intuitive API testing, collections and workspaces, collaboration features, API documentation, mock servers
- Key Features: API Client, Flows (visual API workflows), Monitors, Postbot (AI assistant)
- Typical Users: API developers, QA engineers, development teams
Kong
- Company: Kong Inc. (USA)
- Market Position: Leader in API gateway and service mesh
- Key Strengths: High-performance gateway (built on Nginx/OpenResty), Kubernetes-native, plugin ecosystem, multi-cloud
- Products: Kong Gateway (OSS), Kong Konnect (cloud), Kong Mesh
- Typical Users: Platform teams, microservices architectures
Swagger / OpenAPI (SmartBear)
- Company: SmartBear (USA), OpenAPI Initiative
- Market Position: Industry standard for API specification
- Key Strengths: OpenAPI Specification (OAS) is the universal API description format, code generation, documentation
- Products: SwaggerHub, Swagger Editor, Swagger UI, OpenAPI Generator
- Typical Users: API designers, development teams, enterprises
Apigee
- Company: Google Cloud (USA)
- Market Position: Enterprise API management leader
- Key Strengths: Full lifecycle API management, analytics, monetization, security policies, developer portal
- Deployment: Cloud (Google Cloud), Hybrid
- Typical Customers: Large enterprises, API-as-a-product companies
MuleSoft Anypoint
- Company: Salesforce (USA)
- Market Position: Leader in integration and API management
- Key Strengths: API-led connectivity, integration platform, DataWeave (transformation language), broad connector library
- Products: Anypoint Platform (Design Center, Exchange, Runtime Manager)
- Typical Customers: Enterprise integration teams, Salesforce ecosystem
Key Trends
- API-first design: Designing APIs before implementation using specification-first approach
- GraphQL adoption: Growing adoption alongside REST for flexible data fetching
- AI-powered API testing: Automated test generation and anomaly detection
- API security: OAuth 2.0, API key management, rate limiting, and runtime threat protection