Why do I see a difference between the data I get through APIs and the results from my Explore reports and dashboards?

Question

Why do I see a difference between the data I see with application programming interfaces (APIs) and Explore?

Answer

You might see a difference between API and Explore results for these reasons:

The calculations might be different. API endpoints and Explore metrics might calculate results differently. For APIs, read the API endpoint description. For example, the count tickets GET api/v2/tickets/count endpoint provides an approximate count of tickets. For Explore metrics, check the metric's formula calculation in the Metrics and attributes articles.

The data might be processed differently. API endpoints pull data from the source without changes, while Explore prepares and processes data to provide dashboards and reports.

The data refresh times might be different. An API call gathers the exact result at the time the API endpoint is called, while Explore has various refresh rates. There might be a discrepancy between Explore and your API results.

After you review these reasons, if you still see a significant discrepancy between your API calls and your Explore results, contact Zendesk Customer Support for further help.

See:

Get started with Zendesk Explore for reports and analytics

Admin's guide to the Zendesk API