Inexpensive API for maps and navigation. That's the only one I can think right now.
Open street map?
Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#12Even without buy/pay get good at offering something people want to use at all. It's harder than it seems. It took many tries for me to get the hang of it, most things people just don't want.
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#13Usually good money in scarping price data and selling to traders. HOWEVER, they will expect a very robust API that goes beyond a hobby project / side-hustle level of polish and robustness.
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#14I'd gladly pay for an eSignature API that has pay-as-you-go pricing or a good entry-level plan. Products like HelloSign or DocuSign have high monthly costs associated with API usage.
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#15I would pay a small amount (maybe $5 AUD per month) for access to an Open Banking API that lets me get the transactions, balances, etc from my accounts. Unfortunately under the current regime for Open Banking in Australia (part of the Consumer Data Right) you need to be an "Accredited Data Receiver" which I completely understand if I am accessing and storing financial data on the behalf of others.
However for my own personal accounts... just let me call the API!
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are people making 6 figures selling CS:GO skin price feeds. Really? I was working on a project a few years ago that needed this data so I setup a scraper to get all price data from Steam and Bitskins. It was running 24/7 and putting everything into a database that was very clean and neat. Maybe I should boot that back up and just sell access to the API...
Yes. The gambling sites that accept skin deposits invest a lot of effort into guaranteeing that someone can't fleece them by manipulating the price of an obscure item. On a similar note, there are also folk making 6 figs selling access to steam game hour idlers.
> The gambling sites that accept [CS:Go] skin deposits ...
I had never heard about this before, but it makes (some small amount of) sense. Steam game hour idlers are also something I never imagined btw. We are truly living in the future.
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#17I'd gladly pay for an eSignature API that has pay-as-you-go pricing or a good entry-level plan. Products like HelloSign or DocuSign have high monthly costs associated with API usage.
I was going to suggest Signable [1] which I have used in the past, but it looks like their API is only available on a monthly plan (I'm sure it was available on PAYG before) - but it is cheaper than the 2 you mentioned.
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#18So here is an API we would have paid for, and I assume many still will: A product catalog. They do exist, but they are expensive and aren't not that great.
What we where after and gave up on was an API that would accept an EAN-13 barcode and return product details, images, good descriptions, in multiple language (specifically NOT machine translated) and possible alternative EAN-13 barcodes for the same product.
As a side project to this: An API that will take a list of EAN-13 barcode, a price and a quantity (in stock) and transform it into a number of feeds for various price comparison sites. Again, it exists, but it's expensive, not all that good and it certainly doesn't automatically add product name, descriptions, categories and product attributes.
I think that issue here is, and it's almost bound be the same for most other APIs, it's the data that's interesting. So what data do you have access to that most others don't? My guess is that there aren't any large and interesting dataset that a random person on HN can easily sell, that isn't already readily available.
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#19No one wants to pay for APIs. They want to solve headaches, appease their bosses, build cool things. Figure out a problem that a niche group of people have and you're golden. There are people making 6 figures selling CS:GO skin price feeds.
Ok but you could easily view the question as "What headaches to you want to solve and/or cool things you want to build that could be done using an API that you would be willing to pay for"
Re: Ask HN: What API's do people wanna buy/pay for?
#20I would pay a small amount (maybe $5 AUD per month) for access to an Open Banking API that lets me get the transactions, balances, etc from my accounts. Unfortunately under the current regime for Open Banking in Australia (part of the Consumer Data Right) you need to be an "Accredited Data Receiver" which I completely understand if I am accessing and storing financial data on the behalf of others. However for my own…
Nordigen is free for individuals. Not sure if it is supported by banks in Australia though.