API Monetization Matters More Than Ever in the AI Age

Agentic AI and Model Context Protocol (MCP) are poised to skyrocket API calls behind the scenes. These new advances are taking AI agents to a whole new level, providing access to external systems and data to conduct impressive automation. As most MCP servers wrap APIs, MCP's hockey-stick growth has made the point of integration — the API — more valuable than ever.

The API economy, already worth over $20 billion in 2026, is anticipated to reach a $38.73 billion valuation by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 17.7%, according to The Business Research Company. Gartner anticipates that 30% of API growth will be linked to AI tools using large language models (LLMs).

This evolution marks a sea change for the digital economy. As the user experience point moves toward AI-based assistants and agents, traditional software-as-a-service and web and mobile apps become a less important touchpoint. As such, there's great promise to capture lost revenue and open new revenue streams through API monetization.

Given where things are heading in the AI ecosystem, there has never been a better time to monetize your API.

Below, we'll consider the specific AI technologies and standards ushering in increased API adoption, showcase how companies are already turning APIs into revenue drivers, and outline what it'll take to get there.

Advances in AI Are Ushering in More APIs

APIs are already the core bedrock for enterprise communication and developer integration. In 2024, Imperva reported that APIs make up 71% of total web traffic. At the same time, AI requires data and context to function, and many of the technologies currently maturing in the AI space are directly correlated to pushing API use even higher.

APIs can expose real-time data to partners and end consumers using AI tools for areas like weather, travel, media, finance, and more. They also enable developers to tune their AI coding agents to act on devops systems, databases, cloud infrastructure, and beyond.

AI Products

For instance, generative AI companies like OpenAI use APIs as a core mechanism to provide metered use of their generative AI products. This includes developer-friendly APIs that wrap large language models for reasoning, code completion, text-to-speech, speech-to-text, and beyond.

Agentic AI

Another burgeoning area is agentic AI, in which AI agents go beyond simple chat to gather data from external systems and autonomously complete tasks and drive workflows. In order for this to be possible, agents must connect with APIs. As Doug Gilbert, CIO and CDO of Sutherland Global, told CIO Online in 2025, "We see APIs as the cornerstone of agentic AI."

MCP

MCP, coined 'the USB-C for AI,' is the most popular standard protocol for integrating AI with external data and tools. MCP development has exploded, with one directory cataloging over 17,000 MCP servers at the end of 2025. 58% of MCP servers wrap existing APIs, according to Zuplo's State of MCP report, meaning that MCP use is intrinsically tied to underlying API usage.

Augmenting RAG

AI agents require institutional data to function. And, this is going beyond retrieval augmented generation (RAG). As companies build out agentic knowledge bases, APIs are becoming an ingredient to pull context from other platforms and augment AI reasoning and responses at inference time. In select instances, data scientists use APIs to gather data for model training purposes as well.

Agentic Commerce

As agents get more legs, they are taking on more business and financial functions as well. As part of this, the industry is laying the groundwork for autonomous payments. Protocols like x402, Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) are still at a very early stage. One day, however, they could enable agent-based payments to flourish.

AI Infrastructure

It doesn't end there. AI infrastructure itself is catalyzing much API growth. For instance, syncing with APIs for vector databases, embeddings, fine-tuning, and evaluation workflows. AI developer tooling, new observability frameworks, and governance layers are all bringing new API-based functions to market as well.

Why API Monetization Will Grow in the AI Era

Not only is API growth on a steep upward trajectory, but signs indicate that API monetization will rise alongside many of these AI technology trends. The ability to profit via AI and APIs, shifts in economic models, and the need for more sanctioned, structured data indicate API monetization will become more commonplace.

Significant Revenue Potential

Plenty of companies are already actively monetizing access to data via APIs. For instance, Walmart's MCP server enables it to actively meet customers and drive sales embedded directly into ChatGPT. Or, take the case of AccuWeather, the weather data provider used by a billion people worldwide, which monetizes access to real-time weather data via RESTful APIs. Atlas Reality also recently grew its API-enabled business to $42 million in virtual real estate sales.

The Shift Away from Subscriptions

Another big factor driving demand for API monetization is a major pricing shift occurring across the SaaS market. For some time, companies have been moving away from simple subscription models toward more granular usage-based and consumption pricing. Now, more complex, granular monetization models designed for agentic AI are emerging.

The Rise of Token and Outcome-Based Pricing

On that note, token-based and outcome-based pricing are increasingly common in the AI ecosystem, replacing static per-call pricing. Tokens reflect processing incurred by prompts to AI, while outcomes represent billable results. This shift matters because AI workloads are unpredictable and bursty, and new models tie revenue to actual processing requirements and end results. In this context, monetizing at the API layer is ideal, since it enables granular visibility, metering, rate limiting, quotas, and tiered plans.

The Clamp on Web Scraping

Another interesting factor is the movement to prevent automated web crawlers and bots from accessing public web data without permission. Analysts say 30% of global web traffic comes from such bots. And Cloudflare, the world's most used content delivery network, recently introduced a default ban on web scraping. The expectation is that such preventions will force developers toward sanctioned integration points, like APIs, to access more structured, monetizable data.

Governance and Developer Experience

Unstructured data is pervasive. So, structured, machine-readable data is becoming a selling point in and of itself, with usable APIs being a big developer experience benefit. All in all, for companies with proprietary data and useful developer-facing services, there's never been a better moment to turn on a programmatic way to monetize your data or services. AI needs data and the right degree of context to function, and APIs act as the programmable, monetizable doorway for access.

API Monetization Underlies the Economics of AI

Beyond the current trends, the business value of APIs is clear. APIs have a legacy of acting as significant revenue enablers at scale. HBR once reported that 50% of eBay's revenue comes from APIs, and Salesforce has APIs to thank for 50% of its income. Expedia is also a huge API user, with API-based booking sales making up 90% of its revenue. Over the years, many public APIs have hiked the prices of their APIs, as new partner API programs and API-as-a-product companies have gathered steam.

And now, in the AI age, API monetization presents a strong possibility for revenue growth. But without a new strategy to adapt to new usage-based models in the software industry, you leave money on the table at best, and lose business at worst. API monetization — with flexible methods for different types of usage, like subscription, per-call use, tokens, and one-off data transfer — can help deliver better outcomes.

It's clear that API monetization will be key to supporting economics in the AI age for startups, SMEs, and enterprises alike. That said, it'll take the right API monetization infrastructure to meter granular, token-level transactions and support user journeys with self-service keys, usage dashboards, transparent billing practices, and payment tracking.

Given the indeterminism of agentic AI, API access also requires security: proper rate limiting, just-in-time authorization and authentication, limited scoping for least privilege, encryption, and more. Essentially, all the facets of modern API security best practices will be just as important in an API provider's quest to monetize their services and offer them up for AI consumption.

Turn Your API into a Revenue Stream

For API-first companies looking to act on these trends, the challenge is finding infrastructure that handles usage-based billing, token-level metering, and self-service developer experiences without building it all from scratch. Zuplo's API Monetization options, now in private beta, provides metering, billing, and developer portal capabilities built into the gateway layer.