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I got tired of wasting days on crappy APIs, so I built a tool to fix it.

Hey everyone,

How many times has this happened to you?

You find an API that looks perfect for your next project. The landing page is slick, the docs seem okay. You spend the next day or two integrating it, only to discover:

The stability is a joke.
The real-world latency is terrible.
The "free tier" has hidden limits that make it useless.
The code examples are five years out of date.
As a solo dev, my time is my most valuable asset. Wasting a couple of days on a dead-end API is not just frustrating, it's a genuine setback. I got fed up with the endless cycle of digging through outdated GitHub lists, bloated marketplaces, and marketing-speak.

So, I built Apives.com .

The core idea is simple: Curation over volume. Clarity over hype.

It's not another marketplace with 50,000 APIs you have to sift through. It's a curated, manually reviewed collection of (currently 200+) useful APIs. My goal is to give you the info you actually need to make a quick, smart decision.

What makes it different? (aka The "Why I Built This" Features)

No more guesswork on reliability: For each API, I'm surfacing key stats like Latency, Stability, and Access Type right on the page. You should know if an API is solid before you commit.

Test it before you touch your codebase: There's a Live API Request Runner on the homepage. You can hit a few sample endpoints (like IP lookups, weather, etc.) and see the real JSON response instantly. It's a quick sanity check.

Discover by what you're building: Instead of just browsing categories like "Finance" or "Data", you can start with "What are you building today?". There are cards for things like Authentication, AI Chatbots, Payments, etc., that lead you to a curated list of relevant APIs for that specific job.

Clear, comparable info: Every API detail page has the same structure: Feature Matrix, Operational Stats, and a clear Pricing Model breakdown. The goal is to make comparing two APIs as easy as possible.

This is for you if:
You're a solo hacker, a small startup team, or building an MVP.
You value your time and want to get from "idea" to "working prototype" faster.
You're tired of marketing fluff and just want to know if the damn thing works.

Honest Talk: This is still an early-stage project. The UI is JS-heavy, so you might see a loading state here and there (I'm working on it!). The documentation is still a bit light. But the core loop of discovery and quick validation is there.

The Ask:

I would genuinely love for you to check it out and give me your brutally honest feedback.

Take a look at Apives.com
Try searching for an API or exploring one of the "Build" guides.
What's missing? What feels clunky? What's the one thing that would make this 10x more useful for you?

Thanks for reading. Let's stop wasting time on bad APIs.

on April 29, 2026
  1. 1

    Totally get the frustration with bad APIs, it's a huge time sink. I actually know a few solo software developers and indie hackers who would likely be happy to answer your questions for free.

  2. 1

    Apives is useful.
    The name is the friction.
    You built a tool for developers trying to make faster technical decisions, but the current name sounds like a directory, not something with product gravity.
    That usually makes the product feel lighter than the problem it solves.
    For something built around API trust, speed, and evaluation, the name should feel more durable than “API list with vowels.”
    Davoq.com would frame this much better.
    Shorter, sharper, more technical, and much easier to remember if this grows past “API directory” into actual infrastructure.