Any business that relies on APIs for its apps and services needs to be tracking how they’re performing from moment to moment.
There are myriad tools out there designed to deliver this functionality, to the point that picking the right one isn’t exactly a cake walk.
As a starting point, take a look at these top-rated API monitoring and observability tools and begin your search from here.
SolarWinds
Table of Contents
Another holistic monitoring and observability platform with many different facets is available courtesy of SolarWinds.
Whether you want to understand your Oracle performance more intimately for troubleshooting purposes, pinpoint potential hardware bottlenecks, or anything else relating to infrastructure management and performance oversight, it’s a breeze.
RapidAPI
For monitoring and testing APIs, regardless of type, Rapid API is a powerful and versatile choice. And by using an API that’s part of its marketplace, it’s quicker, easier and more affordable to achieve your aims from moment to moment.
Monitoring is available worldwide, with alerts automatically sent out via whichever medium you prefer when issues are detected.
Excellent integration with the likes of Slack, Twilio and GitHub help to sweeten the deal further, and in spite of its capabilities, Rapid API has an unfussy interface that won’t leave newcomers overwhelmed.
Postman
It’s hard to beat Postman in terms of affordability, because so long as the number of API calls you make each month is under 1000, it’s completely free.
Go above this and you’ll benefit from competitive pricing no matter the level of use you require from it. And the learning curve of harnessing all that it has to offer is softened thanks to the comprehensive training resources that are provided.
Datadog
A brand which offers comprehensive app monitoring, geared towards cloud-powered solutions, Datadog is understandably excellent at API monitoring in this context.
You can test and measure APIs frequently, keeping tabs on key metrics and seeing how performance is faring as part of a wider overview of your infrastructure.
There are also all sorts of integrations available under the Datadog umbrella, including recent additions like LambdaTest. This gives you the kind of flexibility required in enterprise-grade monitoring and testing, where blending services from different vendors is often necessary. You can find another option by checking out Datadog alternative.
Prometheus
If you absolutely cannot afford an app to suffer performance snafus or outages, and you don’t want to have important metrics buried in a sea of separate interface panels and graphics, then the simple approach adopted by Prometheus is what you need.
What you don’t get is in-depth analytics, so you’re expected to handle this with a separate tool. Since Prometheus is open source, it’s free to use and adaptable if you’ve got particular tweaks you’d like to make.
Uptrends
As the name suggests, the API monitoring solution from Uptrends is all about making sure that uptime is prioritized, and that any issues which could eventually lead to unplanned outages are dealt with swiftly.
If problems are detected, alerting is handled efficiently, and there’s also the benefit of being able to monitor and test APIs in multiple locations, so you can see how things stand for users from across the globe. And given how important user experience is to new apps, this could be game-changing.
You can’t get API monitoring as a separate solution from this vendor, so you’ll need to access it as part of its enterprise-grade web monitoring suite.
Assertible
As a no-code monitoring and testing option, Assertible definitely has simplicity on its side. It also boasts the ability to check up on APIs collaboratively, so if you’ve got multiple team members who are responsible for keeping things ticking over nicely, this is convenient.
Add in the option to create custom tests, and an interface that looks clean and is easy to master, and you’ve got an attractive, modestly priced alternative to some of the better known tools on this list.
Dotcom-Monitor
When it comes to putting APIs through their paces, it’s not just user location that’s relevant, but also the browser they’re using to make calls and run your web apps.
That’s an element that Dotcom-Monitor takes into account, allowing you to see how performance differs according to the software that’s in play and avoid compatibility issues.
Ultimately if you’re able to act on the insights that this tool provides, you should be able to optimize page load speed for every permutation of end user.
AppDynamics
There’s a lot to shout about in terms of what AppDynamics brings to the table, which is no surprise given that it’s developed under the Cisco umbrella.
What’s worth highlighting is how well it handles the graphical representation of the data it collects. Visualizations make digesting complex data sets less challenging, and there are also extensive options for monitoring user experience as extrapolated from on-page interactions, not
just API performance.
API Science
One of the reasons that API observability is so important is that you’re likely paying significant sums to third party providers to access their APIs each year, and you want to know that your cash is not going to waste.
By using a tool like API Science, it’s possible to check up on external API performance in addition to monitoring internal APIs that you’ve developed and deployed yourself. If something isn’t right, you’ll know about it sooner rather than later, and the potential for future faults can be minimized as a result.
Checkly
Don’t let its cute name fool you; Checkly is a tool with a lot to offer in terms of observability and API testing.
It’s quick to set up, provides plenty of customization options, and keeps everything you need to know in an uncluttered dashboard.
This is another example of why you don’t necessarily need to look to the biggest players to get all of the API monitoring functionality that you require in your business.
The bottom line
Nearly all of the tools mentioned here offer introductory offers and free trials so that you can see how well they perform and then make a decision based on your experiences. This is sensible because you might not know which is right for you until you’ve had first-hand access.
