You asked about Developer Tools
38 people built something like it. 7 are gone.
That is 21% of the ones whose fate we could settle, against 23% across the whole register. 5 were acquired.
| Launched | What it was | Today |
|---|---|---|
| 2014-01-01 | YCAlgolia A developer-friendly and enterprise-grade search API. · algolia.com | still up |
| 2019-01-01 | YCAlpaca API-first stock and crypto brokerage platform · alpaca.markets | still up |
| 2021-06-01 | YCAnakin One API to get clean data from any website for your AI agents at scale · anakin.io | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | YCMindee AI Document Understanding API · mindee.com | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCFern Instantly offer SDKs and API Docs · buildwithfern.com | acquired |
| 2020-06-01 | YCSeam API for IoT Devices · seam.co | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCTheneo Stripe-like API Docs in just a few clicks · theneo.io | still up |
| 2021-01-01 | API for developers and AIs to access health data · tryterra.co | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | YCRutter The Unified API for Business Financial Data · rutter.com | still up |
| 2022-06-01 | YCMedplum API first electronic health record (EHR) that is open source · medplum.com | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCVelt SDK for adding an agent and human governance layer to your product · velt.dev | still up |
| 2014-01-01 | YCWit.ai Natural Language for Developers --Wit is an API that makes it easy… · wit.ai | acquired |
| 2021-01-01 | YCMystic Low latency API to run and deploy ML models · mystic.ai | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCSpeechly Natural Language Understanding API for Speech that runs on device · speechly.com | acquired |
| 2023-01-01 | YCLiteLLM Call every LLM API like it's OpenAI [100+ LLMs] · litellm.ai | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCBlindPay Stablecoin API for global payments · blindpay.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | YCTrieve All-in-one API for search, RAG, & recommendations · trieve.ai | acquired |
| 2023-01-01 | YCNango A single API for all your integrations · nango.dev | still up |
| 2020-01-01 | YCEnveloop Design and send messages from your app with a simple API. · enveloop.com | gone |
| 2025-09-01 | YCs2.dev API for unlimited, durable, real-time streams · s2.dev | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | YCLuca IQ API-first tax engine for CPA firms and developers · lucaiq.com | still up |
| 2025-09-01 | YCParse Build an API to interact with any website. · parse.bot | still up |
| 2026-06-01 | YCSpeko OpenRouter for Voice AI: one API, every call on the best speech model · speko.ai | still up |
| 2022-06-01 | API for Retrieval Augmented Generation · superpowered.ai | gone |
| 2022-01-01 | API for shared embeddable web browsers · hyperbeam.com | still up |
| 2024-01-01 | API For PDF Document Workflows · fileforge.com | gone |
| 2022-06-01 | The API to search, scrape, and interact with the web at scale. 🔥 · firecrawl.dev | still up |
| 2019-06-01 | Turn any website into an API · dashblock.com | gone |
| 2022-01-01 | Open-source API & UI test automation · karatelabs.io | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCSuperAPI Programmable API gateway that makes APIs cacheable · trysuperapi.com | still up |
| 2025-01-01 | YCReJot We turn complex API integrations into drop‑in full‑stack libraries · rejot.dev | still up |
| 2024-06-01 | YCPinnacle API & SDK for RCS (the next-generation of texting) · pinnacle.sh | still up |
| 2023-01-01 | YCCakework API that adds cloud hosting to any developer platform · cakework.com | gone |
| 2026-06-01 | YCArchal API sandboxes, built for AI agents · archal.ai | still up |
| 2018-01-01 | YCNewCraft Universal API for HR & Payroll · newcraft.io | acquired |
| 2024-06-01 | Turn any website into an API. · expand.ai | still up |
| 2022-01-01 | YCSendo The best SMS/RCS API for startups · sendo.dev | gone |
| 2022-01-01 | YCKable Usage-based billing for API companies · kable.io | gone |
How this compares
The register re-probes every domain it holds. Some that answered last month stop answering. We send that list — what went quiet, and what it was — once a month. Nothing else.
How this was made. Show HN entries are every post from 2021 to 2023 with at least five points that linked to its own domain; code hosts and free hosting are excluded, because a repository outlives the effort behind it. Product Hunt entries needed 100 votes — a far higher bar, so they are the promoted top slice rather than a like-for-like sample. Both are judged by asking the domain whether it still answers: gone means it no longer resolves, refuses the connection, serves a parking page, or says plainly that it shut down. An HTTP error is not counted as gone — a server answering 404 is one somebody still pays for, and an audit of 25 gone-calls found two such sites alive with only a moved homepage. Y Combinator entries use the status YC publishes itself, which is why only those can say acquired. Squatted domains — a lapsed name now serving somebody else's site — are not detected, so these figures run slightly low.