HACKER Q&A
📣 tomjcleveland

What service should have an API, but doesn't?


I often have ideas for fun projects that hit a brick wall when I discover that a popular service I _assumed_ had an API in fact does not.

Examples: Netflix, Kindle, ClassPass, OpenTable.

Often these services do have _some_ kind of API—but it's super limited and/or only available to huge enterprises.

I'm curious if other people on HN run into this problem—and if so, what's the #1 service you wish had a powerful, startup-friendly API?

  👤 unlinked_dll Accepted Answer ✓
If I ran a popular consumer facing service, I would definitely not be inclined to provide a developer API. That's a risky business proposition. And as a startup I wouldn't hitch my business to a developer API on such a service, which is an even riskier business proposition.

That said, I'd love it if Netflix or Pornhub provided their VOD infrastructure as a service. There's a lot of space for content platforms that don't compete with them directly, but are infeasible to get off the ground.

I think a better question then isn't, "which services should have APIs?" but "which companies should provide IaaS?"

👤 yen223
Online banks.

I can understand why securely exposing an API for banking details would be challenging, but I would love a way to access my account statements and daily transactions programatically, without having to pass my credentials to shady 3rd-party apps.

👤 AznHisoka
This is an easy one for me: Google Search