15 Best Postman Alternatives for Automated API Testing

Which is the Best Postman Alternative? Alternative for Postman depends on the features you’re looking for. Postman is arguably a great collaboration platform for API management. Postman is an excellent tool for deconstructing RESTful APIs created by others or testing ones created by yourself. It provides a slick user interface for making HTML requests, eliminating the need to write a bunch of code to test an API’s functionality. Moreover, Postman is ideal for RESTful API tests. It is not a good design for SOAP APIs and other APIs. With this, you might know why Postman is valued so high in the API market.

Before that, let us understand “why we need an API.”

How does an API work?

Imagine you order food online and look for the best restaurants and food of your choice. You type in your preferred food item and tap the search button to see the various options available from multiple restaurants. But what happens between your search and receiving the app’s results? This is where the API enters the picture. It helps take your request to the backend and ensures to return and fulfill its request.

Why do you need an API?

You must test APIs to ensure the project meets the expectations of functionality, security, performance, and reliability. This testing enables developers to begin testing early in the development cycle and eliminate more than half of existing bugs before they become more severe issues, saving time, resources, and money in the long run.

Postman has many fans. It’s never going to be close to being called a flawed tool in a century; you may use it more often than you think. However, other Postman alternatives are also available that you should be aware of. We have compiled a list of the best Postman alternatives we could find (in case one of these features is missing), so have a look!

Testsigma

With No frameworks, No setup, No coding, and No cost, this postman alternative takes API testing to another level. Testsigma is a Cloud-based, end-to-end automated API testing tool that enables everyone to automate API tests right from application design and avoids the hassle of setting up environments and writing code.

Testsigma gives you the freedom to customize & automate your API call sequences to match your application workflow and prevent encountering unexpected errors in the future. It is an excellent technique to increase your productivity and time efficiency.

Testsigma comes with seamlessly Integrated End-To-End Testing that acts as a bridge to bring Functional UI testing and API testing under one roof. With no code feature, all you need to do is to enter the endpoint, choose your API method, add your header content, set your status code, and run the test. It’s that easy!

Wait, it just gets better. You can store your API data set as “Parameters” and run your API test for multiple test data sets without making script changes every time. With different comparison modes, you get to choose the rigidity level of your requirement and validate API responses with varying ways of comparison.

Its a perfect fit; with its ease of integration with your ecosystem, Testsigma blends right into your Dev and QA toolchain by integrating with JIRA, Jenkins, and several

other essential applications to help facilitate an automated CI/CD pipeline.

And it is available for free for the first 21 days. Sign up for the free trial now.

Yes, you read it right. Testsigma offers three packages: community, cloud, and enterprise. Community is an open-source software where you can use all its API features for free (with few limitations).

If you’re looking for a no-code feature, Testsigma is the best alternative. There are a lot of other amazing features in Testsigma like creating tests in NLPs. Why Testsigma is the best alternative to Postman? Testsigma offers both functional UI and API testing, which makes it the best alternative. You can also do Mobile app testing and test analysis in Testsigma which is not available in Postman.

Paw

Paw is an advanced API tool with powerful features designed explicitly for Mac. Its primary function is to test and describe APIs, and it provides a beautiful interface to make activities such as composing requests, inspecting server responses, and exporting API definitions easier.

Paw, like Postman, is a collaborative tool that promotes teamwork. It enables you and your team to make changes and receive real-time updates. It also allows you to synchronize API test configurations. This program makes it easier to create and test software.

Pros:

• Excellent user interface
• End-users will find it simple to visualise and test our APIs.
• More steady and efficient than the competitors

Cons:

• It’s not free.
• Only available on macOS

Paw subscription starts at $49.99/month per user.

Insomnia

Insomnia by Kong enables you to deliver high-quality APIs through collaboration. This postman alternative also includes testing suites, which allow you to create functional tests and centralize APIs. With this platform’s streamlined API client, sending GraphQL, REST, and SOAP requests are simple. Defining variables such as authentication credentials allows you to manage multiple environments.

Furthermore, Insomnia provides powerful tools to help your team accelerate API development. You can make the most of API development by using the built-in specification editor. Thanks to the instant design preview, you can easily make changes without switching applications.

pros:

• Cross-platform, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux
• Available as Open-Source
• Great user interface

Cons:

• Does not have a history feature

The pricing starts from free to $ 12 per user/ month.

Testfully

This Postman alternative runs in the browser and does not require any software installation. It can inspect responses from both local and deployed Restfully and GraphQL APIs and supports Environments and Configs, as well as the ability to embed random data in your requests. 

Moreover, Testfully saves your requests to the cloud, which you can easily share with your teammates. Testfully’s API testing and monitoring features enable you to re-use tests easily and validate the correctness of your local and deployed APIs in different environments. This means you can quickly test and monitor your endpoints without configuring anything.

Testfully offers a free plan with unlimited team members, and the pricing model is not based on the number of users. The only downside Testfully has is that it does not support Soap API. It will cost $49 a month to access their paid features.

Pros:

Swagger UI

Swager UI is another Postman alternative for easier API visualization and interaction with API resources. This Postman alternative has well-organized documentation that is simple to navigate. You can quickly locate resources and collaborate with them to increase productivity. The open-source tool has no dependencies, so you can use it in any environment, whether local or online. It is user-friendly and allows end developers to interact and experiment with API operations.

One of the most appealing features is that Swagger UI is entirely customizable. You can freely modify your tool to meet your needs with complete access to the source code. Swagger UI makes an existing JSON or YAML document interactive. It creates a platform that organizes and categorizes our methods (get, put, post, delete).

Pros:

• Better documentation of API
• User-friendly to understand for non-developer to their needs.
• Can iterate through multiple versions of a definition privately before making a version publicly available.

Cons:

• Lacks versatility in importing files
• Needs better integration with the third-party softwares
• It doesn’t have a way to write test cases as Testsigma has.

Swagger UI is available in both open-source and paid versions, where team plans cost $90/month, so you can pick the one that best suits your needs.

Soap UI

SoapUI provides security and load testing features, and its functional testing supports SOAP and REST API. Users can use SoapUI’s drag-and-drop or point-and-click for scripting features, creating and running automated regression, compliance, and load tests on Web API.

Due to its simple and easy-to-use interface, this postman alternative can be easy to access for users without a technical background.

Compared to Postman, it offers a broader range of API testing features, such as SOAP testing, API discovery, automated assertion creation, templated data insertion, and open-source standards. Depending on your needs, testers and businesses can use the open-source or pro version starting at $829/month.

Pros:

• Load testing web services using different techniques.
• Supports making calls to RESTful APIs
• Both SOAP and REST API are available

Cons:

• UI needs to be improved
• No history of executed tests
• Has performance issues

API Gateway by Amazon

Amazon API Gateway is a solution to help you design, maintain, and publish APIs at any scale. It is a fully managed service that enables apps to access backend data and capabilities effortlessly. 

Amazon API Gateway has several advantages, including quick API creation and the flexibility to execute the same API with numerous versions. This API Gateway develops two APIs: RESTful APIs and WebSocket APIs. It also offers API development at any size to easily monitor API requests.

HTTP APIs are effective for developing RESTful APIs designed for serverless workloads. WebSocket APIs, on the other hand, can be utilized to create two-way communication apps.

While keeping costs in mind, their free tier comes with 1 million REST API requests, 1 million HTTP API calls, 1 million messages, and 750,000 connection minutes. Post that, 

HTTP API calls cost $1 for the first 300 million requests and $.90 per million after that. REST API calls are significantly more expensive, costing $3.50 per million requests for the first 333 million (there are price breaks after that)

Pros:

• Monitoring and Analytics
• Decreased Microservices complexity
• Easy deployment

Cons:

• Configuring your application API and API Gateway will require more orchestration.
• due to the multitude of scenarios Performance degradation is a concern
• Easier integration with different AWS network schemes

Hoppscotch

Hoppscotch is an open-source Postman alternative. Engineers, software developers, quality assurance (QA) testers, and product managers will benefit from the Hoppscotch platform’s integrated API development tools. It comes with a web client touted as an “online collaborative API playground,” allowing numerous developers or teams to construct, test, and exchange APIs.

You can access Hoppscotch without an account. Hoppscotch has a specialized user interface for Restful, GraphQL, and Web socket connections. Using Hoppscotch’s Environment and Variable features, you can submit requests to APIs in multiple settings. Hoppscotch’s testing technique is similar to Postman’s, where a basic code editor for writing Javascript test cases utilizes Hoppscotch’s testing infrastructure.

You can send messages to Web sockets using a dedicated GUI. This Dedicated GraphQL API GUI allows you to study GraphQL schemas and send requests efficiently, and there have been specific UI problems Hoppscotch that will be fixed in future editions.

Since its open-source, it is available for free.

Pros:

• Has great UI
• Available as Open Source
• Can be self-hosted

Thunder Client

Thunder Client is a Vscode Postman alternative that runs as a Visual Studio Code extension (not open source). Its design focuses on simple and efficient HTTP clients while constructing or connecting with APIs. Thunder Client can handle a wide range of API requests. It effectively processes immense amounts of data simultaneously while not slowing down the VS Code program.

It enables collections for grouping related requests and supports the concept of Environment and Environment Variables, which allow you to store and re-use information across numerous requests. ThunderClient provides a UI for setting the desired response code, response time, and response body for testing APIs.

It also supports Visual Studio Code themes and will use your current VS Code theme. Thunder Client is a fantastic choice for a small team that requires basic functionality such as collections, an environment variable, and testing.

Thunder Client is available for free but only available as a VScode extension.

Pros:

• It feels light to use.
• There is no need for an installer because we can use it straight in an IDE like VScode.
• It is simple to install; simply click on the install button on the vscode extension.

Cons:

• Only available as a VScode extension.

Firecamp

Firecamp is an API testing and development platform that is both free and simple to use. It provides many critical metrics for API testing, such as response time, response size, status codes (with meanings), and other data.

One of the most delicate features of Firecamp is the ability to test WebSockets and GraphQL in addition to standard REST APIs. Firecamp is accessible as a Chrome extension and a standalone application for Linux, Windows, and macOS.

Furthermore, free users can invite up to three team members to collaborate in their workspace. Firecamp includes a graphical user interface (GUI) for WebSocket, GraphQL, and Socket.io. With its collections feature, you can group numerous API services and focus on one at a time. Postman collections can be imported, but not Postman environments, and the UI can sometimes be confusing.

The pricing for this Postman alternative starts at $9 (per month/user) apart from the free version, which has limited features.

Pros:

• Import/Export Firecamp Project or any Specs
• History of requests
• Built-in GraphQL explorer.

Cons:

• Requests in several steps (chained) are not supported.
• There is no automatic schema loading.
• There is no editor auto-completion syntax.

Katalon Studio

API testing in Katalon Studio is a comprehensive feature that supports all sorts of REST, SOAP/1.1, and SOAP/1.2 calls. Katalon Studio allows testers to collaborate in multiple ways on their API project, including keyword-driven testing and Page Object Model (POM) testing. Katalon’s API automation IDE offers the best functionality for scripting, debugging, and maintaining testing.

It supports testing all online, mobile, API, and desktop apps. The tool constantly develops over time, allowing users to reliably scale-up testing projects with its solution.

Autocompletion, code inspection, snippets, quick references, debugger, dual interface, and other capabilities are available to testers.

They offer a free version with limited features, followed by the enterprise edition for $1,899 /license/year.

Pros:

• Handles API, Web, desktop, and mobile platform tests
• enables testers and developers to quickly communicate and share test cases
• Keywords for constructing test cases are built-in.

Cons:

• The Katalon studio free version lacks the debugging feature.
• The data-driven capability at the test case level is not available in the free edition of Katalon Studio.

IBM API Connect

IBM API is a handy API tool for creating, managing and publishing APIs across cloud environments. Using IBM API Connect via APIs, you may securely expose record systems, services, and databases. This API platform simplifies corporate operations by providing simple functionality for powering digital apps.

This Postman alternative enables you to create web or mobile applications by enforcing and securing API delivery policies. In addition, IBM provides a comprehensive capability for testing and monitoring APIs. It allows you to create a high-quality API using automated and collaborative testing. You may also use this software to study, socialize, and monetize APIs.

Get IBM API Connect Enterprise at $100.00 per month. IBM API Connect also offers a Free Plan with limited features.

Pros:

• Scalable and stable API platform for creating and managing APIs.
•  easy to configure security and everything else in it.
• Classic UI Interface

Cons:

• documentation needs to be a bit better.
• API management configuration tool can be simplified more

Akana

With improved API administration, Akana assists you in securely transforming your organization. It provides numerous advantages, including reduced security and compliance risk with comprehensive support and improved innovation with new products. Akana, which enables end-to-end API management, can build dependable enterprise services. You can manage RESTful, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs from a single environment in Akana. 

Akana allows you to design, publish, and monitor APIs from a single interface. As a result, Akana is both cost-effective and quick. The extensive features brought to your table make creating and deploying APIs simple. It has the best security UX, and API professionals manage it for the best experience. Furthermore, it enables comprehensive API lifecycle management.

The recent Akana Platform version enhances cloud capabilities, security, and API automation and assists you in developing, documenting, publishing, and testing GraphQL APIs. In a nutshell, all API endpoints can now coexist and be managed in the same API catalog.

Pros:

• Ease of Managing and Monitoring APIs 
• Good API security

Cons:

• Team management needs more improvement
• improvements can be made in graphical orchestration services.

Boomi

Boomi is a trustworthy platform for creating, managing and securing APIs. This tool allows you to configure APIs and provide real-time integrations in a hybrid environment while supporting an entire lifecycle. This postman alternative will enable you to build hybrid apps from any data source and deploy consistent, secure APIs. On-premises data access might also be restricted. This platform can ensure consistent experiences for your partners and customers.

Boomi centralizes lifecycle management in a single interface to maximize performance. It improves visibility and control, allowing you to experience better API management. Boomi, like its API platform peers, to learn more about what it has to offer. Boomi provides Usage-based pricing starting at $50/month and a 21-day free trial.

Pros:

• Time-saving with no-code
• Perfectly priced for mid-sized companies.

Cons:

• The process documentation is via screen prints into word documents.
• Hard to scale parallel processing

Apigee

Apigee is an excellent alternative to Postman if you want to try an API tool. This platform helps develop and manage APIs by later fronting services with a proxy. Apigee has two significant components called services and runtime, where services enable API proxies’ creation, management, and deployment. Meanwhile, Apigee runtime is a collection of runtime services. It allows developers of mobile and web apps to call APIs.

It offers security, analytics, quotas, rate restriction, and other features. Apigee allows you to change the backend service implementation without affecting the public API. Because of well-defined and consistent APIs, it also enables app developers to leverage your services. It also gives you access to a developer portal and analytics services.

Apigee from Google offers “pay only for what you use” pricing. Plans that only charge you for the services you utilize. 

Pros:

• Useful API analytics
• Easy development of a Proxy and APIs
• community support

Cons:

• Lack of mechanism to configure cache limit for particular API
• Debugging is difficult

Final note

While we have highlighted the best Postman alternatives for you, it is up to you to pick the one that appeals to you the most. Each of these tools is worthy of your attention and deserves a try. We encourage you to check them out to see which works best for you.

The critical difference between Postman Alternatives and Postman is that their approach to creating test cases differs. It’s all about using modern technology to create test scripts. It also helps developers save time and make the testing process more accessible.

An alternative to anything is not necessarily better than the original. But when it comes to Postman alternatives that are useful, inexpensive, and non-cumbersome in installation, use, and maintenance — Testsigma could be considered an excellent alternative for Postman.

Frequently asked questions

1. Which is the Best Postman Alternative?

Ans: Alternative for Postman depends on the features you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a no-code feature, Testsigma is the best alternative. There are a lot of other amazing features in Testsigma like creating tests in NLPs.  Postman does not support a collection runner for Graphql, but Testsigma supports it.

2. Why Testsigma is the best alternative to Postman?

Ans: Testsigma offers both functional UI and API testing, which makes it the best alternative. You can also do Mobile app testing and test analysis in Testsigma which is not available in Postman.