element 5 AG

element 5 AG was a German e-commerce and digital-distribution company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Cologne, Germany. It operated a platform that let software developers and publishers sell their products and licenses directly to customers online, growing to more than 10,000 clients across 150 countries and becoming one of Europe's leading software e-commerce providers. element 5 was acquired by U.S.-based Digital River (its direct competitor) for roughly $120M and subsequently absorbed and renamed Digital River GmbH, ceasing to operate as an independent company. It was an early Earlybird Venture Capital portfolio company; this profile records its identity and exit. No live independent API or developer surface remains to enrich.

element 5 AG is profiled on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Company, E-Commerce, Software Distribution, Digital Goods, and Payments.

📡 Source on GitHub

0.0/100 minimal Agent 0/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0

0 APIs

Company E-Commerce Software Distribution Digital Goods Payments Germany Acquired Defunct

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0

Composite quality — 0.0/100 · minimal

Contract Quality 0.0 / 21

Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 17

Access Clarity 0.0 / 17

Operational Transparency 0.0 / 11

Contract Governance 0.0 / 10

Discoverability 0.0 / 9

Regulatory Posture 0.0 / 15

Agent readiness — 0/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 0 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Payments regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/element-5: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Resources

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

EarlybirdPortfolio

EarlybirdPortfolio

Source (apis.yml)

aid: element-5
deliveryModel:
  model: unknown
  open_source: false
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Delivery model not determined — needs a product licence on record
  confidence: low
  source:
  - none
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: unknown
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Unknown
  confidence: low
  source: []
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/element-5.png
name: element 5 AG
description: element 5 AG was a German e-commerce and digital-distribution company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Cologne,
  Germany. It operated a platform that let software developers and publishers sell their products and licenses directly to
  customers online, growing to more than 10,000 clients across 150 countries and becoming one of Europe's leading software
  e-commerce providers. element 5 was acquired by U.S.-based Digital River (its direct competitor) for roughly $120M and subsequently
  absorbed and renamed Digital River GmbH, ceasing to operate as an independent company. It was an early Earlybird Venture
  Capital portfolio company; this profile records its identity and exit. No live independent API or developer surface remains
  to enrich.
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/element-5/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
x-type: company
x-source: vc-portfolio
x-backed-by:
- earlybird
x-tier: stub
x-tier-reason: defunct-acquired
x-status: defunct
x-acquired-by: Digital River (renamed Digital River GmbH)
x-founded: '2000'
x-headquarters: Cologne, Germany
x-enrichment-note: Earlybird's portfolio company element-5-ag is the defunct German software e-commerce firm (acquired by
  Digital River ~2004-2006). A live API exists at api.e5.ai, but that belongs to a DIFFERENT, unrelated US healthcare-automation
  company (Element5, San Jose) that is NOT an Earlybird portfolio company, so it is deliberately not attached here. No live
  domain (element5.com unresolved, element5.de parked on Sedo), docs, packages, or spec surface exists for this entity. Nothing
  to enrich without fabrication.
specificationVersion: '0.23'
created: '2026-07-17'
modified: '2026-09-15'
tags:
- Company
- E-Commerce
- Software Distribution
- Digital Goods
- Payments
- Germany
- Acquired
- Defunct
common:
- type: EarlybirdPortfolio
  url: https://earlybird.com/companies/element-5-ag
apis: []
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com
- FN: APIs.json
  email: info@apis.io
x-enrichment:
  date: '2026-07-19'
  status: backfilled
  pass: local-v1
  note: backfilled from .gitignore signal + verified work evidence

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