---
title: "Best Way to Receive Updates from APIs Without Webhooks (Without Building Polling Systems)"
img: https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/unified-article-images/best_way_to_receive_updates_from_apis_without_webhooks_without_building_polling_systems-icon.png
date: 2026-04-23T00:03:00.000Z
tag: Product
description: "When an API doesn't provide webhooks, the standard approach is incremental polling using cursors like `updated_at` or change tokens."
url: "https://unified.to/blog/best_way_to_receive_updates_from_apis_without_webhooks_without_building_polling_systems"
---

# Best Way to Receive Updates from APIs Without Webhooks (Without Building Polling Systems)
------
_April 23, 2026_

When an API doesn't provide [webhooks](/blog/replacing_polling_with_unified_webhooks_and_virtual_streams), the standard approach is **incremental polling** using cursors like `updated_at` or change tokens.


It works—but it requires building and maintaining a full synchronization system.


A more scalable approach is to **centralize change detection and receive updates as events**, so your application doesn't need to implement polling infrastructure.


# Polling vs Webhooks vs Event-Driven APIs


There are three ways to receive updates from APIs:


| Approach             | How it works                                           | Tradeoffs                                       |
| -------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------- |
| Polling              | Your app repeatedly calls the API to check for updates | High maintenance, interval-based latency        |
| Webhooks             | The API sends updates when changes occur               | Efficient, but not always available             |
| Event delivery layer | Changes are detected and delivered as events           | Consistent, removes polling logic from your app |
Most APIs support the first two. Few support all three.


# Common approaches (and their limits)


## Incremental polling (default)


Most teams implement:

- per-tenant cursors (`updated_at`, tokens)
- scheduled API reads
- idempotent upserts

This is often described as 'best practice.'


But in practice, it requires building:

- schedulers across tenants
- cursor storage per resource
- [pagination](/docs/reference/pagination) handling
- retry and backoff logic
- rate-limit coordination
- reconciliation jobs for missed updates

At scale, most requests return no new data but still consume API quota and infrastructure resources.


## Conditional requests (ETags / Last-Modified)


Some APIs support:

- `If-None-Match` (ETag)
- `If-Modified-Since`

These reduce payload size by skipping unchanged responses.


Limitations:

- still requires polling
- does not identify which records changed
- inconsistent support across APIs

## Delta queries (change-tracking APIs)


Some providers expose endpoints that return only changes since a previous request.


These are the cleanest pull-based model.


Limitations:

- provider-specific implementations
- token expiration and reset behavior
- not widely available across SaaS APIs

## Long polling


The client sends a request that the server holds open until data changes.


Limitations:

- requires provider support
- introduces connection management complexity
- not a general solution across integrations

## Snapshot diffing (last resort)


If no cursor or change tracking exists:

- fetch full dataset
- compare against previous state
- infer changes

Limitations:

- expensive at scale
- slow for large datasets
- difficult to maintain

# The real problem: polling becomes a system


Most guidance stops at 'use incremental polling.'


In reality, polling becomes a system you need to build and operate:

- scheduling across tenants and integrations
- tracking state and cursors
- handling retries and failures
- managing [rate limits](/docs/reference/rate_limits#rate-limits)
- reconciling missed updates

This is not just an API pattern—it's infrastructure.


# What teams actually build


To make polling reliable, teams end up with:

- API reads
- change detection
- internal event generation
- downstream consumers

In other words:

> they convert pull-based APIs into event-driven systems

This is the same pattern used by integration platforms and data pipelines—centralizing polling, change detection, and event delivery instead of implementing it per integration.


# A better approach: centralize change detection


Polling is unavoidable at the API boundary.


But it doesn't need to live in your application.


The more scalable approach is to:

- read from source APIs
- detect changes using timestamps or cursors
- deliver those changes as events

Your application remains event-driven, without implementing polling infrastructure.


# How Unified handles APIs without webhooks


Unified provides a single [webhook](https://docs.unified.to/reference/webhooks#webhooks) interface across integrations, including APIs that do not natively support webhooks.


## When native webhooks exist

- Unified subscribes to provider webhooks
- events are delivered directly

## When webhooks do not exist


Unified:

- reads from source APIs
- detects changes using timestamps and cursors
- delivers those updates as webhook events

From your application's perspective:

- you receive webhook events in both cases
- no polling logic is required in your application

Unified handles:

- change detection
- rate-limit coordination
- retry and backoff behavior
- event delivery

# Why this matters


The question isn't:

> 'How do I poll better?'

The real question is:

> 'Why is polling infrastructure inside my application?'

Polling is an implementation detail.


The decision is where that system lives.


# Final takeaway


For APIs without webhooks, the default answer is polling.


But polling becomes a system at scale.


Most teams eventually build:

- change detection
- event routing
- retry and rate-limit handling

The more scalable approach is to centralize that system and receive updates as events.


Unified does this by:

- using native webhooks when available
- detecting changes and delivering events when they're not

So your application can stay event-driven—without building and maintaining polling infrastructure.


→ [Start your 30-day free trial](https://app.unified.to/login)


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