Best API Monitoring Tools

API monitoring is the process of tracking and analyzing the performance, availability, and functionality of application programming interfaces (APIs) to ensure they function correctly and efficiently. It helps detect issues like slow response times, downtime, or functionality errors.

API monitoring tools help APIs and API-driven businesses ensure guarantee reliability, optimize performance, and safeguard security by offering valuable insights and visibility to all team members. With these tools, users can easily track API uptime, monitor endpoint performance, detect issues in real-time, and analyze metrics to confirm that their APIs are running smoothly.

Geekflare has researched and compiled a list of the best API monitoring tools based on key features such as real-time monitoring, uptime tracking, latency analysis, real-time alerts, reporting and analytics, scalability, and integration options.

• Checkly – Best for Code-First API Monitoring Solution
• BetterStack Uptime – Best for Small to Medium Business
• Dotcom-Monitor – Best All-in-One Website Monitoring
• Sematext – Best for Performance and Data Validation
• Splunk – Best for Enterprise
• Uptrends – Best for Multi-step API Operations
• BlazeMeter – Best for Performance Testing
• AppDynamics – Best for End-to-End Performance Insights
• New Relic – Best for Full-Stack Observability
• Moesif – Best for API Analytics
• Postman – Best for API Development and Testing
• Datadog – Best for Scalable Monitoring
• SmartBear AlertSite – Best for API Monitoring
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Checkly

Checkly offers a code-first API monitoring solution that ensures 24/7 availability for apps and services. It uses Playwright to monitor critical APIs every 10 seconds from 20 global locations and integrates them into CI/CD pipelines.

You can customize Checkly in TypeScript or JavaScript, checking response codes, bodies, and headers. Besides, multistep checks allow you to simulate complex user interactions, while setup and teardown scripts provide complete control over request execution.

Checkly’s alerting system sends timely notifications via Slack, SMS, email, and PagerDuty, with webhooks for extra customization. Global monitoring detects regional outages quickly and ensures optimal performance in all regions.

Checkly makes creating and deploying API checks easier by integrating with development workflows. It also supports imports from tools such as cURL and Swagger, allowing real-time visibility into API performance.

Checkly Pricing

Try Checkly

BetterStack Uptime

BetterStack Uptime is a robust API monitoring tool that delivers real-time insights about the performance and uptime of your web services. It monitors APIs and network protocols like HTTP, ping, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, and DNS.

Every 30 seconds, BetterStack Uptime performs checks from multiple global locations. Before sending alerts, it confirms incidents from 3 different locations to reduce false positives. It also provides screenshots and error logs with specific details for quick issue resolution.

BetterStack Uptime integrates with platforms like Datadog, New Relic, Grafana and cloud services such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. It supports on-call scheduling and allows unlimited voice call alerts and other alert methods such as SMS, email, Slack, Teams, and Push.

You can host customizable status pages on your subdomain. These pages give customers real-time updates during incidents and maintenance. Customers can subscribe to these updates, which improves transparency and trust.

BetterStack Uptime Pricing

Try BetterStack Uptime

Dotcom-Monitor web API monitoring tool tracks API performance and uptime and works with SOAP, REST, JSON, and XML web services. It supports multi-step API calls and sends real-time alerts, ensuring users’ smooth use of both public and private web services.

Dotcom-Monitor’s key features include SSL certificate checks, OAuth 2.0 monitoring, and the ability to verify XML and JSON data. It also integrates with Postman to monitor API collections from various global locations.

Dotcom-Monitor has an easy-to-use dashboard for managing API performance. It allows you to set up alerts and view insights running checks from 30 global locations.

Dotcom-Monitor Pricing

Try Dotcom-Monitor

Sematext

Sematext provides a robust API monitoring tool. It detects API and web service health, performance, and availability issues. Its advanced metric breakdown ability tracks API responses from several geographical locations.

Sematext identifies bottlenecks using waterfall charts, collects custom API metrics, visualizes data, and creates alert rules. It also offers private locations for monitoring APIs behind firewalls or on private networks.

Likewise, Sematext validates API data by monitoring calls to ensure accurate structure and content, identifying issues like invalid codes and time-outs. It also supports secure monitoring of password-protected APIs.

Sematext provides real-time alerts and customizable dashboards and integrates with third-party tools like Slack. It simplifies troubleshooting by linking failed monitor results with backend metrics and logs to identify the root cause.

Sematext Pricing

Try Sematext

Splunk

Splunk monitoring tool detects and resolves performance issues across user flows, transactions, and APIs. It monitors webpage and API performance from nearly 50 global locations. It’s end-to-end testing helps fix issues quickly.

Splunk offers key features such as performance benchmarking, core web vitals analysis, and Google Lighthouse scoring. Besides, it offers recommendations and AI insights to improve customer experience and track the impact of version updates on performance.

Splunk also monitors and reports on service-level agreements (SLAs) and targets (SLOs) for uptime and performance. It lets you analyze site performance against competitors and industry standards.

Moreover, Splunk provides end-to-end visibility from frontend to backend. It integrates synthetic tests with backend services to prevent performance issues and improve digital experiences.

Splunk Pricing

Splunk offers custom pricing for its services with a starting free option.

Try Splunk

Uptrends

Uptrends offers a multi-step API monitoring tool to ensure your API’s performance, function, and uptime. It allows you to create multiple HTTP requests to test API functionality and then use the data to perform other tasks.

Uptrends offers comprehensive performance insights based on monitoring from 233 global locations. It can run as frequently as every minute. Simultaneous tests and real-time alerts can help you identify and resolve regional issues. With automated testing, you can fix issues like failing resources or expired credentials before they affect users.

Uptrends gives you complete control over HTTP requests, including methods, headers, and bodies. You can set assertions to check status codes, content, and request durations. It supports OAuth 2.0 and RegEx pattern matching for detailed validation. Step reports and custom metrics provide detailed insights into API performance.

Uptrends Pricing

Try Uptrends

BlazeMeter

BlazeMeter’s powerful API monitoring feature ensures high API performance, reliability, and security. It allows quick test setups and supports shift-left and shift-right testing strategies, making it an essential part of continuous testing environments.

BlazeMeter can monitor your API performance insights from 19 different geographical locations. Therefore, it helps identify and fix issues early, ensuring a consistent API experience for users across regions.

BlazeMeter has advanced assertion capabilities. You can define precise criteria for successful API calls, utilizing status codes, HTTP headers, and JSON or XML properties. Thus, it ensures accurate data returns and real-world API workflow, from testing to improving reliability.

Furthermore, BlazeMeter integrates with CI/CD tools like Jenkins and monitoring tools like New Relic and Datadog. This integration offers automated checks and detailed APM insights, enhancing internal and external communication and efficiency.

BlazeMeter Pricing

Try Blazemeter

AppDynamics

AppDynamics simplifies monitoring complex application environments for code-to-executive decision-making using its synthetic API monitoring feature. Its end-to-end observability provides real-time code-level transaction insights, making it a valuable application performance management software.

The cognition engine in AppDynamics uses machine learning to detect anomalies in real-time, quickly identifying the root causes of issues and reducing the Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR). It also helps solve problems faster, minimize downtime, and improve application performance.

AppDynamics is also great at managing hybrid environments, providing automated insights that are especially useful during cloud migrations. Likewise, the platform’s smart agent simplifies application setup and updates through a central management interface.

AppDynamics Pricing

Try AppDynamics

New Relic

New Relic integrates with Postman to provide comprehensive API monitoring. It tracks metrics like response times, error rates, and failed tests alongside application data—all from a single, customizable dashboard.

One of New Relic’s key benefits is its advanced alerting capabilities. It lets you set alerts based on a self-adjusting threshold, anomaly, and outlier detection. This ensures you’re instantly notified if API performance falls below expected levels, enabling you to respond and resolve issues promptly.

New Relic simplifies API performance debugging by comparing latency to full-stack metrics like CPU, RAM usage, and network stats. Besides, this contextual analysis helps identify and resolve performance bottlenecks faster, ensuring the smooth operation of APIs.

Moreover, New Relic’s API monitoring tool is easy to set up, particularly for existing customers. The integration is also free for new users, including those on Postman’s free-tier plan.

New Relic Pricing

New Relic offers custom pricing for its services with a starting free option.

Try New Relic

Moesif

Moesif API monitoring tool provides an in-depth, user-centric approach to tracking API performance and security. Unlike traditional synthetic pings, Moesif captures real user interactions, offering a more accurate reflection of the user experience.

One of Moesif’s key features is its advanced anomaly detection, which helps identify unknown issues. It also ensures that possible threats and performance slowdowns are fixed before they affect users.

Moesif’s system is highly customizable. It allows you to create real-time alerts and set monitoring thresholds based on your specific requirements. It also excels in notification management, giving users complete control over alert rules and channel routing.

With real-time behavioral emails, webhook triggers, and customer usage synchronization with SalesForce, Moesif helps businesses optimize API performance and maintain customer relationships.

Moesif Pricing

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Postman

Postman’s API testing feature offers you comprehensive and automated API testing. It ensures that every endpoint, method, and workflow performs as expected. Its collection-based monitors allow you to simulate real-world scenarios, validate responses, and catch API issues early.

Postman’s testing feature integrates seamlessly with Datadog, New Relic, and Splunk, allowing you to correlate API performance data with whole-system metrics. This integration supports continuous monitoring and quick troubleshooting.

Postman’s dashboard displays testing results in an intuitive, filterable format, making it easy to identify trends and issues at a glance. It allows customizing the dashboard to specific requests or regions to improve precision.

Furthermore, Postman’s testing feature sends automated notifications when a test fails, ensuring that no issues go unnoticed. These proactive alerts help you fix issues quickly and maintain API integrity.

Postman Pricing

Try Postman

Datadog

Datadog’s synthetic API testing ensures comprehensive monitoring of API endpoint availability and responsiveness. It supports many protocols, including HTTP, gRPC, SSL, DNS, WebSocket, TCP, UDP, and ICMP, providing full coverage across all network layers.

Datadog’s code-free API tests let you identify and create tests for untested endpoints with a single click, removing the need for complex coding. Thus, validating system performance and reliability becomes easier without manual testing.

Datadog’s synthetic monitoring gives clear insights into network performance, breaking down timing data for easier analysis. So, It helps quickly identify and fix issues by showing each step of the API request process.

Additionally, Datadog keeps connections secure by effectively managing SSL certificates. It tracks when certificates are nearing expiration and checks their validity in different locations. So, the users’ data remains secure, and applications maintain reliable access.

Datadog Pricing

Try DataDog

SmartBear AlertSite

AlertSite by SmartBear is a powerful, codeless synthetic monitoring tool built on the SoapUI functional test engine. It checks API availability, performance, and technical accuracy.

AlertSite provides detailed API health insights to ensure smooth REST and SOAP APIs in web, mobile, and SaaS applications. It can also seamlessly monitor both public and private APIs.

AlertSite lets you reuse existing SoapUI tests or Swagger/OpenAPI files, making monitor setup easy. It also checks API speed, performance, and payloads to ensure APIs are working correctly, not just returning a 200 OK status.

AlertSite provides advanced alerting to notify teams of performance issues. You can route alerts based on error codes, team roles, or specific API transaction steps. It reduces downtime by providing actionable insights to identify root causes and quickly resolve problems.

Smartbear AlterSite

Smartbear AlterSite offers custom pricing for its services with a starting free option.

Try Smartbear Altersite

Here, we compare the best API monitoring tools based on monitoring focus, error-tracking methods, and pricing.

What is API Monitoring?

API Monitoring is the process of tracking the performance, availability, and functionality of APIs to ensure they work as expected. It helps detect issues like response times, error rates, and uptime to ensure your APIs work properly. It helps catch issues early and allows for quick fixes to avoid service disruptions.

API monitoring provides detailed insights into the API’s lifecycle and integrates with development processes like CI/CD pipelines to test code changes against performance standards.

Advanced API monitoring tools offer real-time alerts, platform integration, and detailed reports, helping identify and resolve issues before they impact users. To further enhance API performance, consider exploring comprehensive API management solutions.

Key API Metrics to Monitor

Monitoring key metrics is critical to assess an API’s performance and reliability. Here are the essential API metrics to keep an eye on:

Uptime

Uptime represents the availability of an API, usually shown as a percentage (e.g., 99.999%). High uptime is crucial for ensuring reliability, especially in critical systems, as downtime can lead to significant disruptions.

Response Time

Response time measures how long an API takes to process a request and deliver a response. Faster response times enhance user experience. Factors like network speed, server load, and API complexity affect this.

Latency

Latency is the slight delay between a user’s request and your API’s response. Even a slight delay can make things feel sluggish. High latency can make an app feel slow, especially in real-time systems. Monitoring API latency helps you locate network and server issues.

Endpoint Availability

Endpoint availability ensures every part of your API is working, not just the main API itself. Sometimes, one specific part might have issues, even if the overall API works fine. Endpoint availability checks help ensure that multi-step transactions go smoothly.

CPU Usage

CPU usage is the amount of processing power your API is using. If it’s using too much, it could mean your API is overworking, or some code needs optimization. This can slow down the API. So, monitor CPU usage to help ensure your API runs smoothly and can handle all its tasks.

Memory Usage

Memory usage shows how much RAM your API consumes. High memory usage can slow performance, increase latency, and even cause crashes if the server runs out of memory. Monitoring memory usage helps detect leaks and maintain stable API performance.

Errors Per Minute

Errors per minute measures how many errors your API throws within a minute. A high error rate could indicate bugs, server issues, or problems with external systems. Regular monitoring helps identify and resolve issues before they affect user experience.

Benefits of API Monitoring Tools

API monitoring tools can help improve your API’s performance and reliability in several ways. Here are the key benefits:

Enhanced Reliability: API monitoring tools help ensure your APIs are always running smoothly. These tools run checks, catch issues early, and inform you to fix problems before they affect users. It prevents website downtime and improves reliability.

Performance Optimization: API Monitoring tools track your API’s performance in real-time. Their detailed insights about response time and latency help you spot and fix performance bottlenecks. It makes your API work better and gives users a better experience.

Security Monitoring: API monitoring tools keep your APIs secure by checking for suspicious activity and alerting you about potential issues. Thus, you can take immediate action to eliminate any potential threat that poses a security risk to your website.

Error Identification and Troubleshooting: With real-time alerts and detailed error reports, API monitoring tools help you quickly find and fix problems. They log mistakes, track failures, and reveal the causes of issues. It also helps with quick troubleshooting and prevents bigger service interruptions.

Compliance and SLA Adherence: API monitoring tools help you adhere to industry rules and meet service-level agreements (SLAs). They track how your APIs perform against set standards and contractual obligations. It ensures you meet your commitments and the trust of your clients and partners.

Insight and Analytics: API monitoring tools provide detailed analytics on API usage and performance. They help you track user behavior, spot trends, and gain actionable insights to guide business decisions. It helps improve continuous service quality.

The Cost of API Downtime

When an API fails, it can disrupt your system, leading to financial and reputational damage. Key impacts of downtime include poor user experience, lost revenue, reduced productivity, harm to brand reputation, and potential SLA violations. Over time, these issues erode customer confidence and can result in business losses.

For example, companies that use the API-as-a-Product model may lose customers if their APIs are unavailable or perform poorly. Even a minor downtime can result in significant revenue loss and damage to customer trust. The financial cost varies from industry to industry. 

Future Trends in API Monitoring

The future of API monitoring is shifting towards real-time insights, predictive analytics, and enhanced security. As APIs grow more critical and complex, advanced monitoring tools are essential.

AI and machine learning will play a key role in early issue detection and performance optimization. Monitoring tools will also focus on identifying and preventing security threats like data breaches and DDoS attacks, with AI-driven systems quickly flagging and addressing suspicious activities.

Low-code and no-code API monitoring platforms simplify API monitoring for non-technical users with user-friendly interfaces, driving wider adoption of API monitoring.

Can I use an API gateway for monitoring APIs

Yes, you can use an API gateway to monitor APIs, but it provides limited visibility compared to dedicated monitoring tools. Although it provides traffic, latency, and error rates, API monitoring solutions are better for deeper insights and proactive management. Let’s check out the popular API gateways to learn more about how to use them and what they offer.

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