Technical DictionaryUpdated on February 6, 2026
API
The translator that allows two software programs to talk to each other.
The waiter at the restaurant
Imagine an API as a waiter in a restaurant. You (the website) are at the table and the kitchen (the external system) is in the back. You can't enter the kitchen.
The API takes your order ("I want to display the last 3 Instagram posts"), brings it to the kitchen, and comes back with the dish (the photos) without you needing to know how it was prepared.
It's thanks to APIs that we can display a Google Maps map on a site, or pay with Stripe.
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