--- type: "article" title: "The Demand Report #01 — 28,042 searches, 1,255 still unanswered" newsletter: "APIs.io" newsletter_handle: "apisio" newsletter_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/apisio" author: "Kin Lane (@kinlane)" published: "2026-07-16T17:09:03.920Z" canonical_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/apisio/a/J3C7CmAM" markdown_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/apisio/a/J3C7CmAM.md" chat_url: "https://usecommune.com/n/apisio/a/J3C7CmAM/chat" body_source: "native" likes: 1 replies: 0 body_words: 856 --- # The Demand Report #01 — 28,042 searches, 1,255 still unanswered *What 28,042 people actually searched apis.io for last week — and where the index came up empty.* **Week of June 29 – July 5, 2026 · 8,329 providers indexed** *** Most "API news" is somebody's launch. This isn't that. Every Monday I open up what people actually typed into [apis.io](https://apis.io) — the search box and the MCP server — and read it as a demand signal for the whole API economy. Nobody else has this data, so nobody else can send you this email. Here's what the week told us. *** ## 📈 The Demand Report Search volume jumped hard: **28,042 searches last week, up 49% week-over-week** (18,819 the week before) across 5,758 unique terms. But the number I care about most went the *other* way — **unmet queries fell from 2,955 to 1,255, down 58%.** That gap between "what people ask for" and "what the index can answer" is the whole game, and it closed by more than half in a week as new providers landed. **The demand clustered around two themes:** **1. Data infrastructure is the quiet giant.** Look at the top of the rising list — it's a wall of *Data*: Data Management (13), Data Platform (10), Data Protection (10), Data Transfer (10), Data Collection, Change Data Capture. People aren't searching for "an API," they're searching for the *plumbing that moves and governs data between systems.* If you run a data-movement or data-governance API and you're not in the index, you are invisible to this demand. **2. Generative + agentic AI keeps pulling.** Image Generation (10), Video Generation, RAG (9), Knowledge Graph (10), Vector Tiles (9), Human in the Loop, Anti-Bot. The agent-native crowd is shopping for building blocks, not chatbots. *** ## 🕳️ The Gaps (demand we couldn't answer) These are the top **zero-result** searches — real people, multiple times each, who got *nothing back*. Every one is an opening for a provider to own a category: | | | | | --- | --- | --- | | **SMART on FHIR** | 6 | Healthcare interop is being asked for by name. No indexed provider answered. | | **Edge Computing** | 5 | Compute-at-the-edge APIs are wanted and unlisted. | | **Urban Air Mobility** | 5 | Drone / eVTOL airspace APIs — a whole frontier, zero coverage. | | **Video Generation** | 5 | The AI gap: image gen is indexed, video gen isn't. | | **Change Data Capture** | 4 | Ties straight to the Data-infrastructure demand above. | | **FX Trading** | 4 | Real-time foreign-exchange APIs. | | **Freight Payment** | 4 | Logistics fintech, unanswered. | | **kWh Rates** | 4 | Energy-pricing data — an emerging climate/energy ask. | **If you build in one of these lanes, this is your invitation.** Add your API to the index in about two minutes: [**apis.io/add**](https://apis.io/add) — or point your agent at the [apis.io MCP server](https://apis.io) and have it submit for you. *** ## 🆕 New to the Index The arrivals board — providers profiled into the catalog this week, one industry at a time: - **Autodesk** — 33 APIs behind the design platform *(Construction & Real Estate)* - **Pluralsight** — 30 APIs of learning + engineering metrics *(Education)* - **Soracom** — the IoT connectivity control plane *(IoT & Robotics)* - **Chainstack** — multi-chain node infrastructure *(Blockchain & Web3)* - **DocuSign** — the agreement cloud as six APIs *(Legal)* - **Herald** — one API across many insurance carriers *(Insurance)* - **Duffel** — nine APIs and the flight-booking flow *(Travel & Hospitality)* Full profiles publish daily on the [apis.io blog](https://apis.io/blog) through July 13. *** ## ⭐ Rated This Week: Soracom Every provider in the index carries a composite rating across six facets — contract quality, developer ergonomics, commercial clarity, operational transparency, governance, discoverability. This week's standout is **quietly excellent**, not flashy: **Soracom — 62.9 / 100 · Band: STRONG** 🟢 The IoT connectivity control plane scores in the top band because it does the unglamorous things right: - **Commercial clarity: 84.2** — you can actually tell what it costs and how it's packaged. - **Governance: 65.8** — a real, public OpenAPI 3.0 spec maintained in the `soracom-cli` GitHub repo, not a PDF. - **Contract quality: 57.6 · Developer ergonomics: 60.9** — solid, coverage-aware REST surface. Where it leaves points on the table: **operational transparency (36.8)** — no strong public status/reliability signal surfaced in the index. That single facet is the difference between *strong* and *exemplar*, and it's the cheapest 8 points Soracom could earn. *The rubric, for reference: exemplar 70+ · strong 60–69 · developing 45–59 · thin 30–44 · minimal 0–29.* *** ## 🤖 Reproduce this yourself Everything above came out of public apis.io surfaces. Paste this into your agent (apis.io MCP) to pull the strong-band IoT providers for yourself: ```javascript find_providers(industry=["iot"], band=["strong"], sort="score", limit=10) ``` Or just hit the search: **https://apis.io/search?q=change+data+capture** *** **8,329 providers indexed. 28,042 searches. 1,255 still unanswered.** See a gap that's yours? → [**apis.io/add**](https://apis.io/add) *The Demand Report is a weekly read of apis.io's own search + discovery signal. Forward it to someone who ships an API.* Unsubscribe | 606 W 57th New York, NY 10019 *** ## Discussion No replies yet.