About
Live since 2015. Rebuilt in 2026. Here's the decade in between.
SINCE 2015
It started with mobile or desktop.
Several projects needed to tell mobile visitors from desktop visitors. A User-Agent API put that check in one place. A browser string went in, and each project got the fields it needed back.
The tool was released for free and found users beyond the projects it was built for. A shared utility had become an API other developers were building with.
Email verification was another of the early tools. Postal code lookups followed, then IP addresses. By 2019, four APIs handled questions that came up across all kinds of software. Each had its own site and its own key.
- 2015Email verification and User-Agent parsing launched as separate tools.
- 2018Postal code lookups followed.
- 2019IP lookups joined the lineup.
- 2026The lookups were rebuilt together under one key as ParseAPI.
THE IDEA
It was one problem the whole time.
An email, a postal code, an IP, a User-Agent. Each is a piece of input that software needs turned into something useful. The four tools were doing versions of the same job. The 2026 rebuild brought those lookups together as ParseAPI, with one key and a shared interface.
The routes are short, responses use familiar field names, and errors follow the same shape. Once you've made your first lookup, the next one should feel familiar. That carries through to the SDKs and the examples in the docs.
TWO DOORS
One lookup. Or a whole file.
The same questions also turn up in spreadsheets. Email addresses to check, phone numbers to clean, IP addresses to look up. Bulk brings the API's engine to a whole file. Drop a CSV, choose the columns to check, and download your original data with the results added beside it.
CRAFT
The details are the product.
An API should feel native. Built into your stack, not bolted onto it.
That's worth arguing about a single field name for a week before we ship it. We use ParseAPI every day ourselves, so it has to be good, not just correct, with docs that tell the truth.
An API becomes part of someone else's software. The route you type, the fields you keep, and the time spent waiting for a response all become part of that app. That makes speed and a clear interface everyday requirements.
The examples you run hit the real API. Press Run in the docs and the sample becomes a live response, timed from your browser. Pulse publishes response times measured around the world. You can try the interface and see the speed before writing your own integration.