Here are some of the best questions for an API developers survey about API performance, plus tips to help you craft the right questions for your audience. We know how important it is to capture quality feedback—which is why you can build a highly effective conversational survey with Specific in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for API developers about API performance
Open-ended questions let developers go deep, surfacing pain points and insights that are hard to capture in plain multiple-choice formats. They shine when you want to uncover context, not just quick stats. For example, they can help you discover exactly where latency creeps in, or which API errors frustrate teams the most—a critical insight, given that in Q1 2025, API errors accounted for 67% of monitoring failures (outpacing HTTP and timeout issues)[3].
What are the most common API performance issues you encounter in your projects?
Describe a recent incident where an API’s performance had a significant impact on your workflow.
Which types of API errors do you find most disruptive, and how do you usually resolve them?
How do slow response times affect your app or service’s user experience?
Can you explain the steps you take to diagnose API-related slowdowns?
What tools or metrics do you rely on most to monitor API reliability?
Tell us about a time when an API exceeded your performance expectations—what contributed to that?
What information do you wish API providers shared more transparently regarding performance?
How could your current API workflow be improved to handle performance bottlenecks better?
What advice would you give to teams designing APIs to avoid performance pitfalls?
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for API developers about API performance
Single-select multiple-choice questions help you quantify opinions, reveal patterns, or kick off conversations. Sometimes, just picking an option is less mentally taxing than crafting a detailed answer—especially for busy engineers who are juggling multiple tasks. Multiple-choice questions can quickly point toward trends (e.g., which performance metric matters most in real deployments) and help you focus follow-up questions.
Question: What is the biggest performance challenge you experience when working with APIs?
Slow response times
Frequent errors
Poor documentation
Rate limiting issues
Other
Question: Which metric do you monitor most closely for API reliability?
Response time
Error rate
Uptime/downtime
Latency spikes
Question: How satisfied are you with the current performance of the APIs you use?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Neutral
Somewhat dissatisfied
Very dissatisfied
When to follow up with "why?" If a developer picks “Frequent errors,” a follow-up like, “Why do these errors occur most often?” can unlock actionable insights about error types, weak spots, or documentation gaps. Following up with “why” uncovers motivation and context—essential for targeted improvements.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? Include "Other" when the list might not cover every possibility or you want to leave room for surprises. If someone picks "Other," an open-ended follow-up lets them describe unique issues, revealing potential blind spots in your understanding.
Using NPS for API developer feedback on API performance
Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a powerful, battle-tested way to gauge developer sentiment. For API performance, NPS can reveal how likely API developers are to recommend your service based on real-world experience—an early warning sign if slowness or errors are harming loyalty. Many teams in SaaS use NPS as a leading indicator for churn or satisfaction spikes. You can create an NPS survey for API developers with Specific and see follow-up logic adapted for promoters, passives, or detractors.
The power of follow-up questions
Follow-up questions are game-changers. With AI-powered surveys from Specific, every response can be probed in real time with dynamic, relevant follow-up questions—making your survey truly conversational. This back-and-forth uncovers hidden context and often leads to deeper, richer feedback than static surveys ever deliver. Learn more about our follow-up engine for a full breakdown.
Developer: “Sometimes the API is slow.”
AI follow-up: “Can you share when you notice the most slowdown? Is it at certain times of day or under specific workloads?”
How many followups to ask? In practice, 2–3 targeted follow-ups usually provide enough context. Specific lets you fine-tune how persistent the AI should be and can auto-skip to the next major topic once you’ve gained the clarity you need, making the survey feel natural, not robotic.
This makes it a conversational survey: Respondents feel heard, not interrogated, and insights flow like a real dialogue—not a flat form.
AI-powered analysis of all responses is easy too. Even with walls of unstructured text, Specific can analyze and summarize findings with AI, extracting patterns, anomalies, and themes nearly in real time.
Automated follow-up questions are a new concept—try generating your own survey to see how much richer (and more actionable) the data becomes.
How to prompt ChatGPT to write great API developer survey questions on performance
The secret to getting great survey questions from GPTs isn’t just asking for a list, but offering context and direction. Start simple:
Ask for ideas:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for API developers survey about API performance.
Add more context for richer, targeted ideas—describe your team, type of APIs, or your business goal:
I lead a SaaS product engineering team and want to discover where API performance bottlenecks are hurting developer productivity the most. Suggest 10 open-ended and 5 multiple-choice questions for a survey targeting API developers. Focus on their recent pain points and preferred tools for diagnosing issues.
Prompt the AI to organize its output for easier review:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Drill deeper into specific categories by writing:
Generate 10 questions for categories “diagnostics/tools” and “business impact of downtime.”
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys feel like a chat—not a stiff form. They ask questions, then dynamically adapt with clarifying follow-ups based on past answers. This is why AI survey generators like Specific are revolutionizing the way we collect feedback from technical audiences like API developers.
Let’s compare:
Manual Survey Creation | AI-Generated Survey with Specific |
|---|---|
Manual scripting, one question at a time | Conversational, generated instantly based on your goals |
Static questions, no context awareness | Follow-up questions match user’s real replies and surface deeper context |
Low engagement, high abandonment (up to 55%) [5] | Completion rates as high as 90% and reduced abandonment [4][5] |
Manual data analysis, slow turnaround | AI analysis in minutes—not days [6] |
Why use AI for API developer surveys? The API landscape moves at breakneck speed—errors, outages, and slowdowns can cost teams dearly. AI survey tools boost completion rates and response quality [4], slashing “survey fatigue,” and deliver actionable insights on API performance in hours, not weeks [6]. Looking for an AI survey example? Specific makes creation ridiculously simple, whether you use a prompt or customize from scratch. The platform is designed to engage API developers, ask smarter follow-ups, and maximize feedback quality. See our guide to creating an API performance survey for step-by-step instructions.
Specific sets the bar for best-in-class user experience in conversational surveys, making your feedback process intuitive for both survey creators and API developers responding.
See this API performance survey example now
Start capturing sharper feedback from your API developer community in minutes. Generate a survey and get actionable performance insights, powered by smart AI follow-ups and rapid analysis—no clunky forms or painful manual review required.