Hacker News: APIs for content sites must be free

Technology@lemmy.ml – 13 points – 1 years ago

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/93361

APIs for content sites must be free (🔥 Score: 152+ in 2 hours)

Link: https://readhacker.news/s/5GSi2 Comments: https://readhacker.news/c/5GSi2

*I don’t mind a site charging a nominal fee for API access. Either to cover the cost of API service itself, or more importantly to encourage API developers to be efficient when making API requests. But that's hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, not millions.

Important caveat about the title from the article.

Is there a reasonable model for commercial sites to survive if their APIs are free?

The obvious answer is "charge a reasonable price".

Many services like AccuWeather do that, including having a limited free tier for experimentation or niche applications.

The real problem though is that the value of the data isn't just the cost of storing and making it available - in many cases its strategic. This is why e.g. the Google Maps API gives you pre-rendered map tiles and curated results, but you don't get access to the raw data.