Building your own API directory is a massive waste of time. (Don't do it)
Every indie hacker I know has a "cool project idea" that requires integrating 3 or 4 third-party APIs. And every single one of them wastes the first week doing the exact same stupid task:
Searching Github, scrolling through outdated documentation, testing broken endpoints, and praying the API doesn't crash on launch day.
You think you're making progress, but you’re just wasting prime development time on unverified tools. Building or searching for lists manually is a dead end.
The right path? Stop treating API hunting like a research project. You need a setup where you can search, filter by uptime/documentation quality, and literally test the live endpoints inside a single dashboard before you even touch your terminal.
Since no one else was providing a clean, curated space for this, we built Apives.com . We manually tested and verified over 200+ APIs so developers can stop wasting time on zombie endpoints and just focus on shipping their product.
How many hours did you lose last week just trying to get a third-party integration to work properly? Let’s talk about the real bottlenecks.
I totally get your frustration with outdated API information and zombie endpoints, it's a real pain, but what about the other side of the coin? API catalogs can become outdated too. How do you keep the 200 APIs you have listed up to date? Is it a manual process or do you have an automated system in place? This is often where API directories fall short they're great when they're first launched, but after six months, half of the "verified" badges are no longer accurate and users lose trust. What's your strategy for re-verifying the APIs and keeping the information fresh?