I Got Tired of Wasting Hours on Bad APIs, So I Built a Small Fix

Sumit Raghuwanshi — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 16:54:31 +0000

Hey everyone,

Let's be real for a second. How many hours have you wasted on an API that looked perfect in the docs, only to get back... well, junk?

For the past few weeks, while hacking on a few side projects, this became my personal nightmare. The cycle was always the same:

Find a promising API on a giant marketplace.
Read through beautiful, well-structured documentation.
Write the code, make the call, and... 404, or a response structure from a parallel universe.
Repeat steps 1-3 until I either give up or find something that barely works.
It felt like I was spending more time vetting APIs than actually building my app. The big marketplaces feel too crowded, and "top-rated" often just means "most popular," not "most reliable."

After my third project stalled because of this, I decided to stop complaining and start coding.

Introducing Apives: A Curation-First Approach
I built Apives.com with one simple, selfish goal: create a place I would actually use to find APIs.

This isn't another massive directory. It's the opposite. The entire philosophy is curation over volume.

My approach is pretty straightforward:

Manual Checks: Every API submitted goes through a basic manual check. Does it work? Do the docs match the real-world response?
Use-Case Driven: Instead of just listing categories, I'm trying to focus on what you can build with an API.
No Fluff: Just the essential info, quick code integration snippets, and clear pricing.
It's still super early, very much a work-in-progress, and probably has a few rough edges. But it's born from a real developer's frustration.

[GIVEAWAY] Let's Build Something Cool - 500 Free SerpAPI Credits
To celebrate this small start and to get this into the hands of real builders, I've teamed up with the awesome folks at SerpAPI.

We're giving away 500 Free SerpAPI Credits to the first 30 builders from the DEV community. If you don't know, SerpAPI is a fantastic tool for getting real-time Google search results, perfect for SEO tools, research projects, or AI agents.

How to Claim Your Free Credits:

Make sure you have a SerpAPI account (if not, sign up on their site).
Shoot an email to contact@serpapi.com.
Just mention the code Apives500 in your email.
Their team will manually add the credits to your account.
Quick Heads-Up:

This is for the first 30 people only.
First come, first served!
I Need Your Honest Feedback
This project is nothing without the community. I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts:

Does this problem resonate with you?
How do you currently find and evaluate APIs for your projects?
What's the one feature that would make a tool like this a no-brainer for you?
Drop a comment below. Let me know what you think, or what you'd build with the SerpAPI credits!

Happy building, everyone.
— Sumit

DEV Community: Sumit Raghuwanshi

I Got Tired of Wasting Hours on Bad APIs, So I Built a Small Fix