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I've read many blogs about this but I still get somehow confused, specially why a webhook is a thing vs an API and not just a subset of API.

The way I interpret from most places (and interpret is the key work here) is that a webhook is just a passive "webmethod" that expects a POST (from what I read in most places). How is this different from any other operation that expects a POST in an API?

APIs operations are always passive are they not? They don't trigger by themselves, a request must be done to them.

So, I'm not following. In my head webhook is just a fancy name for an API method that accepts only the HTTP POST verb.

Please, shed some light. Really confused here with all the fuzz.

Note: really sorry if this is not the right community for this kind of question. If so, please indicate the right one and I'll change.

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Yes, in some sense a webhook is an API.

However... typically when we use the word "webhook", we are thinking of a particular kind of use. Normally, they are used as for notifying the server of an event that might be of interest to it. They're not an arbitrary API; they usually have a specific purpose.

As far as I know, there is no formal definition of the term, so nothing forces people to use terminology in this way -- this is just my informal sense of how the word tends to be used.

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