REST website screenshot

REST

REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for designing networked applications, defined by Roy Fielding in his 2000 doctoral dissertation. REST uses stateless communication, standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH), and resource-oriented URLs to provide scalable, cacheable, and loosely coupled interfaces. It has become the dominant approach for building web APIs, forming the foundation of modern API design principles and tooling ecosystems.

REST publishes 4 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include API Design, Architecture, HTTP, REST, and RESTful.

The REST catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

REST’s developer surface includes GitHub presence and 9 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
30.6/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-08-05 · rubric v0.9.1
AccessFreemium
4 APIs
API DesignArchitectureHTTPRESTRESTfulWeb Services

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-08-05 · rubric v0.9.1
Composite quality — 30.6/100 · thin
Contract Quality 3.2 / 25
Developer Ergonomics 0.0 / 20
Commercial Clarity 7.9 / 20
Operational Transparency 4.8 / 13
Governance 8.3 / 12
Discoverability 6.5 / 10
Agent readiness — 3/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
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 7 / 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
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/rest: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Want it done for you? Prioritized profiling — $2,500 →

APIs 4

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

REST Architectural Style

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style originally defined by Roy Fielding. REST provides six guiding constraints: client-server separation, statelessne...

OpenAPI Specification

The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand capabilities of...

HTTP Semantics

RFC 9110 defines the semantics of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the foundation of the World Wide Web and RESTful API communication, including methods, status codes, he...

JSON:API

JSON:API is a specification for how a client should request that resources be fetched or modified, and how a server should respond to those requests, built on top of REST princi...

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Rest Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Rest Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Rest Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Rest Context

9 classes · 5 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

REST API Rules

5 rules · 4 warnings 1 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 1

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

REST API

7 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Rest Architecture Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Rest Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · DNSSEC · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Specification
Specification
 OpenAPI
OpenAPI
 JSONSchema
JSONSchema

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

Vocabulary
Vocabulary

Build 2

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub
GitHub
 Tooling
Tooling

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Learn 1

Tutorials, courses, talks, and written guidance

Tutorials
Tutorials

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website
Website

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

RFC
RFC

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: rest
name: REST
description: REST (Representational State Transfer) is an architectural style for designing networked applications, defined
  by Roy Fielding in his 2000 doctoral dissertation. REST uses stateless communication, standard HTTP methods (GET, POST,
  PUT, DELETE, PATCH), and resource-oriented URLs to provide scalable, cacheable, and loosely coupled interfaces. It has become
  the dominant approach for building web APIs, forming the foundation of modern API design principles and tooling ecosystems.
type: Index
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/rest.png
tags:
- API Design
- Architecture
- HTTP
- REST
- RESTful
- Web Services
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rest/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2025-01-01'
modified: '2026-05-02'
specificationVersion: '0.19'
apis:
- aid: rest:rest-architectural-style
  name: REST Architectural Style
  description: 'Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style originally defined by Roy Fielding. REST
    provides six guiding constraints: client-server separation, statelessness, cacheability, uniform interface, layered system,
    and optional code-on-demand. Any API conforming to these constraints is considered RESTful.'
  humanURL: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
  tags:
  - Architecture
  - HTTP
  - REST
  - Web Services
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
  - type: Specification
    url: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7231
- aid: rest:openapi-specification
  name: OpenAPI Specification
  description: The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows
    both humans and computers to discover and understand capabilities of a service without access to source code, documentation,
    or network traffic inspection.
  humanURL: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html
  tags:
  - API Design
  - API Documentation
  - OpenAPI
  - Specification
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification
- aid: rest:http-semantics
  name: HTTP Semantics
  description: RFC 9110 defines the semantics of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the foundation of the World Wide
    Web and RESTful API communication, including methods, status codes, headers, and content negotiation.
  humanURL: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110
  tags:
  - HTTP
  - RFC
  - Semantics
  - Standards
  properties:
  - type: Specification
    url: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110
- aid: rest:json-api
  name: JSON:API
  description: JSON:API is a specification for how a client should request that resources be fetched or modified, and how
    a server should respond to those requests, built on top of REST principles with conventions for relationships, pagination,
    filtering, and sparse fieldsets.
  humanURL: https://jsonapi.org
  tags:
  - API Design
  - JSON
  - REST
  - Specification
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://jsonapi.org/format/
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/json-api/json-api
common:
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/rest-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://restfulapi.net
- type: Specification
  url: https://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/rest_arch_style.htm
- type: RFC
  url: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9110
- type: OpenAPI
  url: https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html
- type: Tutorials
  url: https://restfulapi.net/rest-api-tutorial/
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-Specification
- type: Tooling
  url: https://openapi.tools
- type: JSONSchema
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rest/refs/heads/main/json-schema/rest-api-schema.json
- type: Vocabulary
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/rest/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/rest-vocabulary.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com