APIfriendly

APIfriendly is a design and development philosophy that prioritizes API usability and accessibility for developers and clients. It describes APIs, platforms, and services engineered to be easy to discover, understand, integrate, and maintain. Core goals include clear documentation, stable contracts, consistent conventions, and robust tooling to support rapid integration.

Key principles of APIfriendly include explicit and complete API documentation; predictable resource modeling and URL structures; stable versioning and deprecation policies; consistent authentication and error handling; language-agnostic client support and generated SDKs; strong input validation and meaningful error messages; performance considerations; and testing and observability.

Practices often associated with APIfriendly include the use of design and documentation standards such as OpenAPI or Swagger, API contracts, consumer-first design, interactive API consoles, SDK generation, code samples, tutorials, and sample applications. The approach emphasizes a predictable developer experience and clear, actionable guidance for integration.

APIfriendly is used as a qualitative label rather than a formal specification; organizations may advertise APIfriendly APIs to signal ease of use. It is compatible with REST and GraphQL, and can apply to internal APIs, public APIs, and microservices architectures. The concept is intended to guide governance and implementation decisions across an API program.

Reception of the term centers on developer experience; proponents argue that APIfriendly design reduces integration costs and speeds time to value. Critics note that the label is subjective and that true usability requires ongoing governance, performance optimization, security, and accessibility testing.

History and context: the concept emerged with the broader API economy and consumer-oriented API-first development in the 2010s and 2020s, as teams sought measurable improvements in API quality and developer satisfaction.