Connecting and sharing data across disparate systems is a critical part of modern-day software development. Nearly every application needs to communicate and share data across many services, both internally and externally. Businesses often have to connect internally built apps to external services such as Twilio for customer notifications, Stripe for payment processing, and Okta for customer authentication. To do this effectively, businesses need a scalable and efficient way to communicate with these various services. That’s where APIs and webhooks come into play. Both APIs and webhooks act as a conduit to share data among separate applications, or to integrate 3rd-party services into your app. While APIs and webhooks are similar, they differ significantly in the way they make requests, so they have very different use cases. What is a webhook, and how does it differ from an API? A webhook is an HTTP callback configured to listen for a defined.