APIs are everywhere in today’s enterprise — REST, SOAP, GraphQL and beyond — spreading across environments and platforms at breakneck speed. This explosion brings a hidden cost: API sprawl. When teams can’t see which APIs exist, where they live or who owns them, development slows, security risks multiply and engineers waste time building what already exists.The answer isn’t better documentation. It’s rethinking your API discovery strategy and the tools that support it.The Missing Half of API DiscoveryMost organizations manage API discovery with developer portals, which are simply searchable catalogs where engineers can find, test and integrate with available APIs. These portals excel at serving API consumers, but they only tell half the story.What about the teams building and operating these APIs? Who do you contact when an API throws errors? Which team owns that critical payment service? Is it meeting security standards? When was it last updated?This is where an antiquated approach to API discovery falls short. A portal can tell you which APIs exist, but not the full context needed to use them effectively or govern them properly. Effective API discovery must serve both consumers and producers.For example, consumers need:Fast, intuitive access to available APIs.Clear documentation and testing capabilities.Self-service onboarding.In essence, we need to give API consumers what they need to discover APIs for reuse and application development.Producers need:Visibility into who owns what.Governance and compliance tracking.Operational context and dependencies.Conversely, producers and owners need the context necessary to build secure, reliable and governed internal API inventories.This dual need is why leading organizations are adopting internal developer platforms. While portals handle the consumer experience, service catalogs capture the producer-side metadata that makes APIs truly discoverable and manageable.How It Works in PracticeImagine a fraud detection team publishes an internal API for transaction scoring. They document it in the developer portal with clear specs and examples. Weeks later, the mobile payments team starts building peer-to-peer fraud checks.Instead of building from scratch, they search the portal and discover the existing fraud API. They review its documentation, test some endpoints and request access in a fully self-service manner.But before integrating, they need deeper insights. Is this API reliable enough for payment processing? Who maintains it? Does it meet compliance requirements?This is where the service catalog becomes indispensable. It provides a powerful, 360-degree view of all the organization’s critical services. For example:Live operational data: Current error rates from the Kong Gateway, active incidents from PagerDuty and stale pull requests from GitHub.Compliance status: Scorecard results showing the API specification’s adherence to the OWASP Top 10 linting rules, acceptable P95 latency and proper authentication plugins being enabled.Complete service history: Every deployment, incident, configuration change and ownership transfer tracked across all integrated tools.Team context: Not just who owns it, but their GitHub repos, Slack channels and on-call rotations,The mobile team sees the fraud API has low latency, passes all security checks and has responsive maintainers. They message the team directly through Slack and start integrating with confidence.What could have been weeks of redundant development — or worse, integrating with an unreliable API — becomes an informed decision backed by real data.The Importance of a Holistic Approach to API Discovery The key is to be able to bring both sides of API discovery together for a holistic view of your API landscape.A strong developer portal will serve API consumers with branded, customizable portals. Developers can then browse APIs, access documentation, test endpoints directly and register applications. It’s the front door for anyone looking to consume APIs.A modern service catalog complements this by capturing the full context around every API and service. The right tool will aggregate metadata and live, operational data from across your toolchain like GitHub repos, PagerDuty rotations, Slack channels and deployment details, thereby creating a living inventory of your API ecosystem.To ensure quality and compliance, you want a service catalog that includes scorecards that automatically evaluate services against your organizational standards. This allows platform teams to track security compliance, documentation quality and operational readiness across their entire API portfolio, turning governance from a manual audit into continuous monitoring.Together, they create a complete discovery experience. Developers find and use APIs faster. Platform teams maintain visibility and control. Security teams sleep better knowing every API is accounted for.Organizations that invest in comprehensive API discovery today will avoid the sprawl trap tomorrow, unlocking the full value of their API investments.Learn more about Kong’s holistic approach to API discovery here and schedule a demo to explore how Kong Konnect can help your team improve API visibility, governance and reuse.The post Tackle API Sprawl with a Holistic Discovery Strategy appeared first on The New Stack.