The API is cheaper (up to around 330 in-depth queries per day), more powerful, easier to use, by definition not subject to the whims of history unavailability,

The API is cheaper (up to around 330 in-depth queries per day), more powerful, easier to use, by definition not subject to the whims of history unavailability, and doesn't seem to be down when the web platform is down. I wasted half a day making a nice frontend, but it was unaffected by today's outage and got better results than when I was restricted to the web UI.