Buf
Buf is a modern developer platform for Protocol Buffers and gRPC, providing a CLI toolchain, schema registry, and streaming infrastructure. It replaces traditional protoc-based workflows with linting, breaking change detection, code generation, remote plugins, and the Buf Schema Registry (BSR) for centralized schema distribution. Buf also offers Bufstream, a Kafka-compatible streaming platform built on Protobuf. Used by enterprises including EA, Intel, IBM, OpenAI, and Okta.
Limited machine-readable signal and partial portal coverage — documentation a human can read, but little a machine or agent can consume without scraping.
API Evangelist profiles Buf the way a machine reads it — 17 machine-readable artifacts across 3 APIs, pulled from the provider's own public surface and indexed so a developer, an analyst, or an AI agent can evaluate it against every other provider on the network.
Every provider in the network is reduced to the same set of machine-readable artifacts — OpenAPI contracts, event specifications, GraphQL schemas, runnable collections, pricing and rate-limit signals, security posture, OAuth scopes, and the agent surfaces (MCP servers and skills) that let software drive the API on its own. We profile them because the interface is the part of a company you can actually inspect: it is a truer signal of what a provider does than any marketing page. From those artifacts we compute the Kin Score — Buf scores 29.2/100 (thin), with a separate agent-readiness read of 5/100 (human only). The full breakdown is below, followed by every artifact we hold — each card links through to its machine-readable definition on apis.io.
Kin Score
This is the API Evangelist rating — a single, repeatable read computed from the artifacts on this page. Green fill is points earned; the red track is points possible, so every bar shows earned-versus-possible at a glance. Every facet and dimension name is a link: it opens that measurement's page on APIs.io, where the rating runs across the whole catalog — the exact checks that feed it, how every profiled provider distributes on it, and who is at the top of it.
Kin Score
How this is scored →scored 2026-09-10 · rubric v0.20.0
Put this on your own site. The badge is drawn live from Buf's current Kin Score — paste it once and it updates itself every time the score is recomputed. It follows your visitor's light or dark setting, and it links back here so anyone who sees it can read the full breakdown.
<!-- Kin Score · API Evangelist -->
<a href="https://providers.apievangelist.com/providers/buf/"
title="Buf on API Evangelist — API profile and Kin Score">
<img src="https://apis.io/badge/buf.svg"
alt="Buf Kin Score — API readiness rating by API Evangelist" width="150" height="150" loading="lazy">
</a>[](https://providers.apievangelist.com/providers/buf/)<!-- Kin Score · API Evangelist -->
<a href="https://providers.apievangelist.com/providers/buf/"
title="Buf on API Evangelist — API profile and Kin Score">
<img src="https://apis.io/badge/buf/card.svg"
alt="Buf Kin Score — API readiness rating by API Evangelist" width="340" height="120" loading="lazy">
</a>More shapes, themes and sizes → · Score as JSON · How badges work
How we profile Buf
Each block below is one kind of artifact we hold for Buf. For each we say what it is and why it earns a place in the profile, then list every one we've indexed — capped at two rows, scroll within the panel for the rest.
APIs 3
Each API is captured as its own OpenAPI definition — every operation, parameter, and response. This is the single most useful machine-readable description of what an API does, and it's what lets us score, lint, mock, and generate against it without asking the provider for anything.
Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.
Buf Schema Registry (BSR)
The Buf Schema Registry (BSR) is a centralized repository for managing, distributing, and documenting Protobuf schemas. It provides dependency management, generated SDKs in mult...
Buf CLI
The Buf CLI is a local Protobuf development toolchain providing linting, breaking change detection, code generation, formatting, dependency management, and schema push/pull to t...
Bufstream
Bufstream is a Kafka-compatible streaming platform built on Protocol Buffers. It provides schema enforcement, Iceberg integration, and administrative tooling for managing Kafka-...
Pricing Plans 1
Pricing is part of the interface. Machine-readable plans tell you what a tier costs and includes before you commit — one of the things the Kin Score reads for access clarity — renamed from commercial clarity in rubric 0.12, because a free statutory interface has access terms and no commercial ones.
Published pricing tiers and plan structures.
Buf Plans Pricing
PLANSRate Limits 1
Rate limits are the difference between a demo that works and a production integration that doesn't fall over. Publishing them is an operational-transparency signal — and a hard requirement for any agent that plans its own throughput.
Documented rate limits and quota policies.
Buf Rate Limits
RATE LIMITSFinOps 1
Cost, billing, and metering signals let a buyer model the financial operations of an API before it's live. We profile them for the same reason we profile pricing: the money is part of the contract.
Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.
Buf Finops
FINOPSFeatures 6
The notable capabilities this provider advertises, captured as structured features so they can be searched and compared instead of read one landing page at a time.
Notable capabilities this provider offers.
buf lint
buf breaking
buf generate
buf push / buf dep
Reflection API
Language Server Protocol
Security Posture 1
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals — the evidence that a provider takes security seriously enough to document it. We profile it because you can't govern what you can't see.
Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.
Use Cases 4
What developers actually build with this provider — captured so the catalogue answers 'what is this for', not just 'what does this expose'.
What developers build with this provider.
Protobuf Schema Management
Code Generation
API Linting and Governance
gRPC and ConnectRPC Development
Resources
Every other property we hold for Buf — documentation, portals, status pages, policies, and corporate surface — grouped by the job it does, following the integrator's arc from getting started to running in production.
Get Started 3
Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call
Documentation 1
Reference material describing how the API behaves
Build 2
SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with
Access & Security 1
Authentication, authorization, and security posture
Operate 4
Status, limits, changes, and where to get help
Commercial 4
Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use
Company 4
The organization behind the API
← All providers · Data indexed from github.com/api-evangelist/buf · machine-readable index on apis.io
This is an independent, third-party profile of Buf, published by API Evangelist. We do not operate, host, resell, or support these APIs, and we are not affiliated with or endorsed by the company unless stated above. Everything here is built from publicly available information — the company's own site, developer portal, documentation, public repositories, and the specifications it publishes for public use. Nothing is obtained by breaching a system, defeating an access control, or using credentials.
The Kin Score and Agent Readiness rating are independently calculated assessments of a company's public API artifacts, scored against a published rubric. They are not certifications, endorsements, security assessments, or audits.
Corrections, re-scores, and removal are free — no partnership or purchase required, and you do not need to justify the request. A removed company is recorded as unrated, never scored zero for having asked. Acknowledgement within one business day; removal within two.
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you will get a person, not a form — we will tell you exactly which public URLs this profile was built from.