Quick answer
SheetZAPI is the actively maintained Stein alternative. Stein (steinhq.com) has shown no public updates since 2020 and has no commercial support. SheetZAPI offers everything Stein did — Google Sheets to REST API with filtering and pagination — plus schema change detection, webhook delivery, Redis caching, CORS configuration, Excel/CSV support, and a paid support tier.
Stein is an open-source project that converts Google Sheets to a REST API. As of 2025, the steinhq.com hosted version shows no signs of active maintenance: the GitHub repository has not received commits in several years, and there is no support channel for production issues. For prototypes and personal projects this may be acceptable. For production workloads, running on an unmaintained platform is a reliability risk.
Stein and SheetZAPI use similar REST conventions. Stein endpoints follow /1/{spreadsheetId}/{sheetTitle}. SheetZAPI endpoints follow /api/v1/d/{sheetId}/rows. Both return arrays of row objects keyed by header. For most integrations, migration is a URL swap plus adding an X-API-Key header. SheetZAPI's response envelope wraps data in { data: [...], meta: {...} }, so update any response parsing accordingly.
Stein provided basic read (GET) and write (POST, PATCH, DELETE) with filtering and search. SheetZAPI adds: Redis caching (sub-15ms responses vs. Stein's direct Sheets calls), configurable cache TTL, Schema Watch for column change detection, HMAC-signed webhook delivery, CORS origin configuration, IP allowlisting, Excel and CSV file support, aggregation endpoints (sum, count, min, max, mean), and a commercial support SLA.
Stein can be self-hosted, which gives control but adds infrastructure overhead: deploying, scaling, updating, and monitoring an Express server. SheetZAPI is a fully managed service — uptime, Redis caching, Google API quota management, and updates are handled automatically. For solo developers and small teams, the managed approach eliminates a maintenance burden.
Is Stein (steinhq.com) still maintained?
Stein's GitHub repository has not received public commits since 2020 and the hosted service shows no active maintenance. For production workloads, consider a maintained alternative.
How do I migrate from Stein to SheetZAPI?
Update your API base URL from steinhq.com to api.sheetzapi.com and add an X-API-Key header. SheetZAPI uses similar REST conventions. The response format wraps data in a { data, meta } envelope, so update any response parsing.
Does SheetZAPI support the same features as Stein?
Yes, and more. SheetZAPI supports read, write, filter, search, and pagination like Stein, and adds Redis caching, schema change detection, webhooks, CORS, IP allowlisting, and Excel/CSV support.
Can I self-host SheetZAPI like Stein?
SheetZAPI is currently a managed service. A self-hosted option is on the roadmap. The managed service eliminates infrastructure overhead for most teams.
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