DEV Community: Santino Zanone

Why finding the right API still takes too much work

Santino Zanone — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 13:35:46 +0000

There are plenty of APIs on the internet.

That is not what slows people down.

What slows people down is everything that happens between "I need an API for this" and "I trust this one enough to ship with it."

If you have ever looked for an SMS API, phone validation API, OCR API, or enrichment API, you already know the loop:

search
open a marketplace
read a few listings
open provider docs
check pricing
search GitHub for examples
check Reddit to see if anyone got burned
test it
discard one or two options
repeat

That is not discovery in the clean sense. That is research work.

More supply did not make the workflow easier

For a long time, the market acted like a bigger catalog would fix this.

It did not.

A bigger catalog can just mean more duplicated options, more thin listings, more outdated docs, and more stuff that looks promising until you are close enough to test it.

If I am solving a real problem, I do not care that a category has 50 listings. I care that maybe 3 are serious and I still have to spend time figuring out which 3.

The real bottleneck is confidence

Most of the time, I can find an API.

The hard part is knowing whether I should build around it.

That is where the time goes.

Is this maintained?

Is the pricing clear?

Will support answer if something breaks?

Is the listing accurate?

Does the product match what the page claims?

That is why discovery is still harder than it should be. The market is good at showing options. It is still not good enough at helping developers trust them.

What better discovery should look like

At minimum, better API discovery should:

narrow the field quickly
make the basic facts obvious
reduce the need to leave the platform for outside research
reward clear, well-maintained providers instead of noisy ones

That is the gap I keep noticing.

There is already enough supply.

What is missing is a cleaner way to move from search to confidence.

If you want to see how we think about that problem, the marketplace is here:

Explore APIs on LimitPear

Why we built LimitPear: a verified API marketplace for developers

Santino Zanone — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 22:04:34 +0000

APIs are everywhere, but discovering the right one still feels more painful than it should.

If you are building a product, an internal tool, or an automation workflow, APIs are often the fastest way to add real capability. But the search experience around them is still inconsistent.

You often end up in directories where:

listings vary a lot in quality
trust signals are weak
it is hard to know what is production-ready
good APIs are mixed with a lot of low-context noise

That is a big part of why we built LimitPear.

The gap we saw

We kept coming back to the same question:

Why is API discovery still so messy?

The issue is not just search.

It is trust.

When developers evaluate an API, they are not only asking what it does. They are also asking:

can I trust this?
is it maintained?
is the listing clear enough to evaluate?
is this something I should build around?

When those answers are unclear, the whole discovery experience gets slower and riskier.

What we think a better marketplace should do

A marketplace should not just collect listings.

It should help good APIs stand out with stronger standards and better context.

That means:

better discovery
clearer expectations
stronger trust signals
a better environment for both buyers and providers

We think verification matters here.

Not as a decorative feature, but as part of the marketplace standard.

Why this matters for sellers too

Good API builders already do the hard work:

building the product
maintaining uptime
improving docs
supporting users

But if the marketplace layer is noisy, even strong APIs can struggle to communicate quality.

That is bad for buyers, and it is also bad for providers.

Why we started LimitPear

We built LimitPear because we think API marketplaces should be more useful and more trustworthy than they are today.

We want a marketplace that helps developers discover APIs with more confidence, and helps providers operate in an environment where quality actually matters.

We are still early, but that is the direction.

If this resonates with you, you can explore what is already live here:

https://limitpear.com/apis

Building the API Marketplace that Doesn't Screw developers.

Santino Zanone — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 02:18:21 +0000

Hi, I'm Santino, and with some friends, we are the founders of APIHUB, an API Marketplace that Doesn't Screw developers.

The idea came from our own experience. We had used the other well-known marketplace and were tired of dealing with spammy, low-quality APIs, slow payouts, unclear processes, and support that always replied too late.

So APIHUB was born. Today it offers:

10% commission (+ PayPal fee)
Automatic refunds (within the first 10 days, based on quota used)
Monthly payouts (currently via PayPal)
Real, responsive support
An upcoming review system designed to reward real API quality

We’re now looking for the first users — both API providers and consumers — who want to help us shape the platform or simply want to give us feedback. Early members will also benefit from 0% commission during their first months.

Let us know what you think!

Here is our community:
https://discord.gg/RczV95RdZp

Thanks a lot,
Santino