API business models and pricing
Based on our review of the world’s top 100 API developer portals, we have identified the following trends in terms of pricing and business models.
Top 100 companies business models:
BUSINESS MODEL
STARTING PRICE AVG
AVERAGE COMPANY AGE
PAY AS YOU GO
$15
10 years
SUBSCRIPTION BASED
$185
8 years
Rounded average API prices based on the company website traffic:
BUSINESS MODEL
LOWEST TRAFFIC HALF
HIGHEST TRAFFIC HALF
PAYG (PAY AS YOU GO)
$30
$10
SUBSCRIPTION BASED
$235
$160
Halves split below 600K visitors per month and above.
Rounded average API prices based on the company funding:
BUSINESS MODEL
LOWEST FUNDING HALF
HIGHEST FUNDING HALF
PAYG
$10
$16
SUBSCRIPTION BASED
$200
$160
Halves split below $85m funding and above.
For PAYG business models, no company monetizes their API based on the number of API calls. Instead, business models are based on Credits, MAU, Revenue Sharing or custom metric values. Those values are custom metrics and are closely tied in to the business value provided, either based on minutes, transactions, consumption step, etc. You can check our whitepaper to look at custom metric values for APIs.
Average company age per business model and API type:
BUSINESS MODEL
DATA
PROCESSING
SERVICE
NO PUBLIC INFO
6 years
5 years
8 years
PAYG
9 years
7 years
10 years
SUBSCRIPTION BASED
7 years
10 years
Business model per API type:
No Public Information
PAYG
Subscription Based
The subscription model is widely used for “Service” type APIs whereas this is not the case for “Processing” type APIs. All in all, PAYG is the business model used most.
