Developers are increasingly using third-party APIs to build applications, and the cost of some APIs can quickly increase. It has been difficult for businesses to understand and find ways to manage these costs.
That’s where Lunar.dev comes in. It’s a tool designed from the ground up to help developers monitor, manage, and take control of their API billing. Today, the company is releasing an open source version of the tool and also announcing a $6 million seed investment.
Lunar CEO Eyal Solomon said that businesses are increasingly relying on third-party APIs to quickly add functionality to applications such as payments, instant messaging, and access to large language models. Masu. These APIs make it easy to add this type of advanced functionality, but can have an impact in terms of monthly usage costs. “As enterprises expand their use of APIs, we’re seeing them build their own internal solutions to better manage and enforce control over the use of third-party APIs,” Solomon told TechCrunch. told.
They weren’t aware of a viable product for managing the use of third-party APIs, so they set out to build one. “The way we look at things is that we focus solely on consumption to help businesses reduce costs and maintain flawless performance and efficiency when it comes to using APIs,” he said.
Installation involves starting a Docker container that loads the Lunar proxy and Lunar interceptor. This allows you to see API traffic flowing through your development pipeline to your API provider. Lunar does not need to connect directly to the API to understand usage. After installation, it will automatically start intercepting your API traffic. Through a command line interface, developers can set usage policies, such as the maximum cost allowed, and those policies are implemented as traffic flows through the interceptor. A graphical interface for policy configuration is planned in the roadmap.
“We are in the developer pipeline, between the natural traffic from production to the API provider, where all the policies and policies are implemented and enforced,” Solomon said. says.
The company decided to start with an open source version of the tool to increase developer buy-in. In the future, we plan to build managed services for companies that don’t want to deal with raw open source, and this is ultimately how we make money. Lunar releases open source products in the following ways: MIT licenseAnd Solomon says open source components are important to his company and its development.
“We are open source, and being open source is some of the key building blocks on our platform. It’s something we’re dedicated to. [offering] our community of developers and engineering teams,” Solomon said.
The company is currently a small company with eight employees split between locations in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, but is currently hiring and seeking R&D and marketing personnel.
The $6 million seed was led by Uncork Capital, with participation from Angular Ventures.
Source: techcrunch.com
