Building a Future-Proof API Inventory How to create a living API Inventory and avoid vendor lock-in

As the number of APIs grows, managing them becomes increasingly complex. Without clear visibility and governance, APIs can proliferate uncontrollably, creating operational, security, and compliance risks. A living, governed API inventory ensures every API is documented, versioned, and maintained alongside development, providing a single source of truth that is always accurate, up to date, and fully aligned with the APIs that are exposed. 

42Crunch helps organizations build this inventory using open, standardized formats such as OpenAPI, stored directly in source control alongside the API code. This approach avoids vendor lock-in, enables cross-team collaboration, and allows the inventory to be leveraged across development, testing, security, and operations. By embedding API governance into the development workflow, teams can enforce security and compliance continuously, maintain runtime protections, and adopt a true DevSecOps approach for scalable, secure API operations.

API discovery can be used as a once-off cleanup operation while proper API governance ensures  a single, standardized, living API Inventory.

Different ways to discover APIs:

• Connect to Source Code Repositories
• Integrate with Native API Platforms
• Use test artefacts such as Postman or QA collections
• Identify APIs using network and operation logs
• Use a proxy to monitor live traffic to discover APIs