---
title: Universal API
description: One clean REST API in front of 3,400+ apps.
---

**MindCloud** is an integration platform that makes talking to any API simple. The **Universal API** — one of its products — puts one clean, predictable REST interface in front of **3,400+ apps**: Slack, Gmail, Shopify, HubSpot, Salesforce, Stripe, QuickBooks, and thousands more. Connect an app account once, then read and write its data through the same request shape you use for every other app.

## Why use the Universal API?

Every API is its own world. Different authentication and token refresh. Responses in XML, CSV, or inconsistent JSON. Dates in a dozen formats. Status codes that don't mean what they say. Pagination, filtering, and sorting that work differently everywhere. Wiring up even a handful of apps means learning — and maintaining — all of it.

The Universal API puts one normalizing layer over that mess:

- **One shape in, one shape out.** Whatever format a provider speaks, you send and receive clean camelCase JSON — with data types normalized too, so you are not parsing five different date formats.
- **Authentication handled.** Connect an account once. The Universal API manages the credentials and token refresh. No provider tokens ever live in your code.
- **Consistent reads.** Pagination, filtering, sorting, and field selection work the same way across every app.
- **One error format.** Provider failures come back in a single, predictable envelope instead of each API's own status-code chaos.

It normalizes everything it can — without changing what the underlying API actually does.

## Get started

It is free to start.

- **[Quickstart](/docs/universal/rest/home/latest/introduction/quickstart)** — make your first request in a few minutes.
- **[Browse apps](/docs/universal/rest/home/latest/introduction/browse-apps)** — find your app and open its actions.