Application Programming Interface - a way for different software applications to communicate with each other. Like a waiter who takes your order and brings food from the kitchen.
When you check the weather on your phone, the weather app uses an API to get current weather data from a weather service.
An API is a general concept, not a single cloud product. These services help you publish, secure, monitor, and manage APIs (often HTTP/REST) used by apps and integrations.
Explore real-world architectures from our community that use API: