API Developer Experience: Endpoints, Errors & Auth
Measures developer satisfaction with API endpoint clarity, error diagnostics, and authentication workflows to identify friction points and inform API roadmap priorities.
Sample questions
A preview of what’s in the template. Every question is editable before you launch.
In the past 30 days, how often did you interact with our API?
- Daily
- Several times a week
- Weekly
- Once or twice
- Not in the past 30 days
How clear is the URL structure and naming of our API endpoints?
In the past 30 days, approximately how often did you encounter an API error response?
- Never
- Rarely (1–2 times)
- Sometimes (3–5 times)
- Often (6 or more times)
- Not sure
Which authentication methods did you use or configure in the past 30 days? Select all that apply.
- API key
- OAuth 2.0 — Client Credentials
- OAuth 2.0 — Authorization Code
- JWT / Service account
- HMAC or request signing
- No auth changes in the past 30 days
- Not sure
Overall, how would you rate the clarity of our API (documentation, endpoints, and error messages combined)?
Based on your responses in this survey, please share any additional thoughts or suggestions about your API experience.
Which of the following best describes your primary role?
- Backend engineer
- Frontend engineer
- Full-stack developer
- DevOps / SRE
- Data engineer
- Product manager
- QA / Tester
- Student
- Other
Thank you for your time. Your feedback directly helps us improve the API experience for all developers.
Which of the following activities did you perform with the API in the past 30 days? Select all that apply.
- Reading/fetching data
- Creating or updating records
- Managing authentication/authorization
- Configuring webhooks/callbacks
- Bulk or asynchronous jobs
- Building or maintaining integrations/SDKs
- Testing or troubleshooting
- Other
How clear are the required and optional request parameters (headers, query params, body)?
Which of the following error types did you encounter? Select all that apply.
- Validation errors (4xx)
- Authentication failures (401)
- Permission/scope issues (403)
- Resource not found (404)
- Rate limiting (429)
- Timeouts or network errors
- Server errors (5xx)
- Deprecation or version errors
- Other
How easy or difficult was it to generate or rotate API keys or credentials?
How likely are you to recommend our API to a fellow developer?
How long have you been working with web APIs?
- Less than 1 year
- 1–2 years
- 3–5 years
- 6–9 years
- 10+ years
How clear are the response formats and field definitions returned by our endpoints?
How helpful were the API error messages in diagnosing and resolving issues?
How easy or difficult was it to set up an OAuth flow (authorization code or client credentials)?
Rank the following areas by how much improvement would benefit your workflow (drag the highest-impact area to the top).
- Endpoint clarity
- Error message quality
- Authentication flows
- API documentation
- SDKs & developer tools
What is the approximate size of your organization?
- 1–10
- 11–50
- 51–200
- 201–1,000
- 1,001–5,000
- 5,001+
How clear is the pagination behavior (cursors, offsets, page limits) across endpoints?
If you recall a particularly unhelpful error message, please paste it or summarize it briefly.
How easy or difficult was it to manage token refresh or session handling?
Which programming languages or platforms do you primarily use with our API? Select all that apply.
- JavaScript / TypeScript
- Python
- Java
- Go
- Ruby
- C# / .NET
- PHP
- Other
Name one endpoint or area of the API that felt unclear and briefly explain why.
Describe any authentication blockers or confusing steps you encountered.
In which region are you primarily located?
- North America
- Europe
- Asia
- Latin America
- Middle East
- Africa
- Oceania
- Prefer not to say
What’s included
AI follow-ups
Adaptive probes on open-ended answers that pull out detail a static form would miss.
Attention checks
Built-in safeguards against rushed answers and low-quality respondents.
AI-drafted copy
Wording, ordering, and branching written by the AI — tuned to your research goal.
Auto report
Themes, quotes, and a plain-English summary write themselves once responses come in.
Why this template
What this template is built to do — we found no directly comparable template from other survey tools to review.
What sets it apart
- Includes four dedicated opinion-scale questions plus an open-text follow-up isolating endpoint, parameter, response, and pagination clarity rather than lumping 'API quality' into one vague score
- Separates error-handling friction from auth friction with distinct question blocks (error frequency, error types, error-message helpfulness, a paste-in field for actual unhelpful error text, then a parallel set for API keys, OAuth setup, and token refresh)
- Closes with an AI follow-up interview question that adaptively probes on whatever the respondent actually reported, plus a drag-and-drop ranking of improvement priorities to directly inform roadmap decisions
- Captures role, API experience tenure, org size, languages/platforms, and region as segmentation variables so friction points can be sliced by developer profile
Ready to launch?
Open this template in the editor. Every part is yours to change before the first respondent sees it.