An LLM API lets an application send text or other inputs to a hosted model and receive generated content, tool calls, embeddings, or structured data. The provider manages model weights, accelerators, and serving infrastructure.
Engineers commonly encounter APIs from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, cloud platforms, and services that host open-weight models. Exact model families change quickly, so learn the shared concepts: messages, context limits, streaming, tools, structured output, usage accounting, and rate limits.
Provider details still matter. Authentication, role names, event formats, safety responses, and model features are not identical. Use current official documentation and keep model IDs in configuration. Choose providers by measured quality, latency, cost, data policy, region, and operational support for the product's workload.
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