Choosing an API Provider: What Actually Matters

Choosing an API provider feels low-stakes until you're three months into a project, tightly coupled to their endpoints, and discovering why everyone complains about them. Switching costs are real. Integrating an API takes time. Migrating to a different one takes more. The choice you make now follows you for a while. Here's what actually matters when evaluating providers. Documentation Quality This is non-negotiable. If you can't understand how to use the API, nothing else matters. Good documentation includes: Clear, tested code examples in multiple languages Complete endpoint reference with every parameter explained Error code reference (not just "an error occurred") Quickstart guide that gets you from zero to first request in minutes Changelog so you know when things change Bad documentation has: Outdated examples that don't work Missing parameters in the reference Generic error codes with no explanation No versioning or changelog "Contact us for details" where details should be Test