Edit: Thank you for all of your answers. I feel I have a much better understanding of what’s going on. Hope to see y’all on the other side of this.
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At its simplest, an API is talking to a website.
For example, asking Reddit what posts are currently recommended (when not using reddit.com) involves making a request (asking) the Reddit API what posts are recommended for this user. If the request is valid, the Reddit API will return (answer) with a list of posts. This is currently free, and you can ask as many things as you want (up to 60 times per minute).
When API’s aren’t free, the website will ask for a unique key that’s linked to your account in the API request so they can bill you. They will keep track of how many times you ask the API something and charge costs accordingly, or they will use a subscription model where you have X amount of API requests per month/day.
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