Digital Business Runs on APIs
From social media logins to payment gateways and everything in between, APIs are the building blocks of modern software. However, automating business processes across many different APIs can be complex and it doesn’t account for processes that require human work. Many API-driven processes require additional technologies such as RPA bots and microservices.
Camunda enables you to orchestrate processes that require APIs along with other technologies and work that is done by people, so you always have an end-to-end view on your most important business processes.
Benefits of Effective API Orchestration
- End-to-End Process Transparency
Visualize, troubleshoot, analyze, and improve processes that span across multiple APIs and other process endpoints. Get the business context your stakeholders need, regardless of the number or complexity of the APIs involved.
- Increased Automation
Replace repetitive manual tasks with orchestrated APIs to increase the level of automation in your processes, improve their efficiency, and reduce the chance of human error.
- Agility for Process Modernization
Replace RPA bots and other brittle task automations with APIs without redesigning business processes or disrupting processes that are in progress.
End-to-End API Orchestration Lifecycle
Design
Align the business and IT using a common process model and process modeling language
Dedicated business process orchestration logic makes it easy to make changes and roll out improvements
Build a catalog of reusable templates for common scenarios to enable business technologists
Automate
Highly scalable execution engine to execute business processes that invoke tens or hundreds of APIs
Monitor processes with the ability to discover, analyze, and resolve technical service issues
Maintain process state in case of API availability issues so the process can resume when the API is available again
Improve
View API usage in the context of business processes so business and IT users can identify opportunities for improvement
Use process heatmaps to understand how long API calls take and whether they are affecting process performance
Customize reports on process performance and business KPIs for decision makers
Start Orchestrating APIs with Camunda Marketplace
Camunda Marketplace is a trusted source of integration technologies that help you quickly and reliably orchestrate complex business processes across your entire technology stack. In Marketplace, you can discover and install pre-built Connectors for REST and GraphQL APIs, plus many other popular tools and technologies.
Helpful resources you can count on
Check Out the REST Connector
Learn how to configure the Camunda REST Connector in less than five minutes.
Start Orchestrating API Endpoints
Follow our tutorial to start orchestrating REST API endpoints in just a few steps.
Achieve High Performance with Zeebe
See how Camunda’s workflow engine, Zeebe, was designed for high-performance, resilient processes.
Frequently asked questions
What is API orchestration?
API orchestration is the coordination of APIs, people, AI agents, and other technologies in a single governed business process. Instead of wiring point-to-point API calls, you model how services collaborate, then run that model on a workflow engine that manages state, resilience, and visibility. This gives teams an end-to-end view of processes that span many tools and technologies, including steps that require human work. With Camunda, API orchestration adds the business context that stakeholders need to visualize, troubleshoot, analyze, and improve complex processes while maintaining autonomy for underlying services. It also supports mixed patterns; for example, combining APIs with AI agents, RPA bots, and microservices, so you can automate today and evolve over time without losing control or auditability.
How does Camunda enable API orchestration?
Camunda supports the full lifecycle. In design, business and IT align on a common BPMN process model, reuse templates, and separate process logic from service implementation so changes are easy to roll out. A highly scalable workflow engine executes processes that can invoke tens or hundreds of APIs, monitors execution, and preserves process state during API outages so process instances resume when services recover. For improvement, Camunda Optimize provides heatmaps and customizable reports so teams can spot slow calls, understand the impact on SLAs, and prioritize fixes.
What are the key benefits of API orchestration with Camunda?
Camunda provides end-to-end process transparency; you can visualize cross-API processes, troubleshoot failures in context, and give stakeholders a shared source of truth. Camunda also enables teams to increase automation, improving efficiency and reducing human error. With Camunda, teams can swap brittle task automations for APIs without redesigning the business process or interrupting running instances. Camunda’s workflow engine maintains state across availability issues, while Optimize surfaces API performance with heatmaps and KPI reports so you can target the biggest gains. Together, these capabilities reduce risk and accelerate change, turning fragmented service calls into reliable, measurable business outcomes.
What kind of use cases are good candidates for API orchestration?
Choose journeys where multiple APIs must collaborate over time or respond to events. Common patterns include customer onboarding, order-to-cash, claims handling, subscription changes, Know Your Customer (KYC) checks, payments, and notifications, especially when a few tasks require human review. Camunda orchestrates these flows end to end, coordinating calls to internal and external APIs. Camunda Operate provides a single process view to analyze failures, latency, and handoffs, while Camunda Optimize provides data to improve performance without touching individual services. Because the workflow engine maintains state during outages, it is also well-suited for processes that cannot fail when an upstream API is temporarily unavailable.
How can I get started with API orchestration in Camunda?
Start by modeling a cross-API process in BPMN from start to finish. Connect a few services using pre-built connectors from Camunda Marketplace and keep any existing integrations you already trust. Run the process to visualize execution and identify slow or flaky calls. Use Camunda Optimize to build heatmaps and KPI reports for process stakeholders, and iterate quickly on the model without redeploying every service. As confidence grows, expand to additional APIs, replace brittle automations with stable endpoints, and rely on Camunda’s stateful engine to resume work seamlessly after outages.
