Top 14 Postman Alternatives for API Testing and Development (2024)

Postman is a popular API development and testing tool that allows developers to test, debug, and document APIs.

Despite its popularity, Postman’s limited automation and collaboration capabilities, high pricing, and steep learning curve often lead developers to consider better Postman alternatives.

API testing tools help developers test their APIs’ functionality, performance, and security by sending requests, validating responses, and generating reports to ensure the API works as expected.

Geekflare has researched and compiled a list of the top Postman alternatives based on key features such as testing capabilities, user interface, integration options, and pricing.

• 1. SoapUI – Best for Web Service Testing
• 2. RapidAPI – Best for API Marketplace and Discovery
• 3. Katalon Studio – Best for Test Automation and API Support
• 4. Kong Insomnia – Best for REST and GraphQL
• 5. Advanced Rest Client – Best Open-Source Desktop App
• 6. Hoppscotch – Best Light-Weight Solution
• 7. Testfully – Best for Collaboration
• 8. HTTPie – Best for Scripting and Debugging
• 9. Testsigma – Best AI-Powered Automation
• 10. Firecamp – Best for Functional and Performance Testing
• 11. Httpiness – Best for API Security Testing
• 12. Assertible – Best for Integrated Testing into CD/CI Pipelines
• 13. Apache JMeter – Best for Load Testing
• 14. Swagger – Best for API Design & Documentation
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SoapUI

SoapUI is a powerful tool for developers to manage, create, and perform end-to-end tests on various APIs, including REST, SOAP, and GraphQL. Its easy-to-use graphical interface makes creating or executing automated regression, functional, and load tests easy. It also supports testing for Java Message Services (JMS) and Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), making it versatile for developers working on various projects.

SoapUI offers two versions: SoapUI Open Source, which is free and includes basic API testing, and ReadyAPI, a paid version that comes with advanced features such as API virtualization, performance testing, and improved reporting options.

SoapUI Key Features 

• API functional testing: SoapUI helps you test whether your API functions as expected. Functional testing is one feature that makes SoapUI stand out from Postman in the SoapUI vs Postman battle. 
• API security: SoapUI offers a range of security features to protect your internal, public, and third-party APIs from vulnerabilities.
• API performance testing: It improves API testing coverage with data-driven techniques, efficient technology stack utilization, and comprehensive application logic validation.
• Test reporting: SoapUI enables you to generate detailed reports to help you make informed decisions while testing your APIs.

Try SoapUI

RapidAPI

RapidAPI is an advanced HTTP client that allows you to test and describe your APIs. Its native macOS interface will enable you to compose requests, generate client code, export API definitions, and inspect server responses.

RapidAPI supports many API types, including RESTful APIs, SOAP APIs, GraphQL APIs, and more. It provides native JSON schema support and complies with RAML and Swagger descriptions.

RapidAPI for Teams is a collaboration extension for RapidAPI that allows team members to collaborate on API projects. It features version control, real-time updates, and security measures to protect data access. It also provides management and monitoring functionalities such as tracking API usage, monitoring performance metrics, and alerting for anomalies.

RapidAPI Key Features 

• Collaboration: Developers and testers get real-time updates as RapidAPI allows them to make conflict-free changes and synchronize all API test configurations.
• HTTP Client: RapidAPI allows developers to send all HTTP requests with an HTTP toolset and a fully-featured visual editor. 

Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio is a test automation tool for testing mobile, desktop (Windows), web, and API applications. It suits different users, as beginners can use the low-code option while experts are provided with infinite possibilities.

Katalon Studio has an intuitive debug perspective that isolates the root causes with information such as expressions, breakpoints, and variables. It enables comprehensive testing, from designing tests to functional validation, ensuring the delivery of functional APIs.

Katalon Studio Key Features

• Easy setup: Katalon Studio has ready-made test scenarios, object repositories, and keywords. 
• Reusable test artifacts: Developers can share plugins and desirable capabilities, eliminating the need to define settings manually. 
• AI-powered script generation: Katalon Studio leverages AI, allowing users to generate tests using the Katalon-GPT combination.

Try Katalon Studio

Kong Insomnia

Kong Insomnia is an easy way to debug, design, and test APIs. It has an extensible plugin ecosystem and a dev-friendly interface. Its built-in automation feature eliminates the clutter of other API tools.

With over 350 open-source plugins, Kong Insomnia offers a wide range of options to customize and enhance its functionality. It provides real-time response validation using custom-defined validation rules, thus ensuring the correctness of API during testing.

Kong Insomnia supports and executes various requests, including WebSockets, HTTP, REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and SOAP, all from one platform.

Kong Insomnia Key Features 

• Git integration: Enjoy easy integration with Git, allowing you to efficiently manage repositories and permissions directly from Kong Insomnia.
• Automatic validation: Maintain consistent API designs effortlessly with Kong Insomnia’s automatic linting and validation features, ensuring error-free APIs.

Try Kong Insomnia

Advanced Rest Client

Advanced Rest Client (ARC) is a powerful API testing and debugging tool designed to streamline the process of interacting with and testing RESTful APIs. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux users.  It allows developers to view and store API configurations in workspaces for documentation and tutorials.

Advanced Rest Client allows developers to authenticate users through OAuth2 authorization. This multi-step feature checks for the validity of the user inputs and the validity of sessions on the server. 

Advanced Rest Client Key Features 

• HTTP requests: With Advanced Rest Client, you can easily send various HTTP requests, allowing you to test different API endpoints efficiently.
• Built-in documentation: With Advanced Rest Client, you can quickly generate documentation while building and testing your API. 

Try Advanced Rest Client

Hoppscotch

Hoppscotch is a free, open-source API client for testing REST, GraphQL, Websocket, SocketIO, MQTT, and SSE requests. It offers self-hosted, where you can run it on your infrastructure and its cloud solution. It provides a user-friendly UI to streamline API development, debugging, and testing processes. 

Hoppscotch allows you to create an environment to store reusable scripts. The environment feature also enables you to share data with your team. It is available as a Command-Line Interface (CLI) tool and a web service. It’s perfectly designed for teams, with features like workspaces, access-level roles, and real-time collaboration.

Hoppscotch offers advanced functionalities like custom headers, managing environment variables, and pre-request scripts to customize API requests and create complex test scenarios.

Hoppscotch Key Features

• Supports different protocols: Hoppscotch allows users to work with various protocols, including GraphQL, RESTful APIs, and real-time protocols. 
• Supports authentication: Hoppscotch makes it easy to authenticate users and protect your APIs from unauthorized access.

Try Hoppscotch

Testfully

Testfully is an API monitoring and testing tool. Its API Client can send requests to REST and GraphQL APIs. Initially built as an internal tool, it was later released for public use. 

Testfully allows you to customize request headers and bodies to suit your needs. It supports imports from other tools like Postman.

Testfully Key Features

• Multiplatform: You can use Testfully on the web or download the desktop version.
• Requests are easy to organize: You can organize your requests using folders to ensure a good sequence. 
• Automated tests: Enjoy automatic tests and do away with manual intervention through the CIs and alerting systems. 
• Requests chaining: Testfully offers a multi-request system to prevent overlapping requests.

Try Testfully

HTTPie

HTTPie is a command-line and desktop HTTP client. This tool is designed for testing, debugging, and interacting with HTTP services and APIs. 

HTTPie allows you to select output colors if you don’t like the defaults through the style option. You can organize your work efficiently using tabs, spaces, and collections. This organizational system allows for easy referencing and project management.

Httpie has a rich ecosystem of plugins and extensions that extend its functionality and allow you to customize your workflow.

With HTTPie, you can preview and build requests without actually sending them, enabling you to test and refine them before finalizing and executing them.

HTTPie Key Features

• Multiplatform: You can use HTTPie on Linux, macOS, and Windows operating systems. 
• Supports authentication: Authenticate users’ inputs to protect your APIs from unauthorized access from malicious users. 
• Built-in JSON support: Httpie has built-in support for JSON data, allowing you to easily send and receive JSON payloads in your requests.
• Customization Options: HTTPie provides a range of customization options to suit your specific needs. You can set custom headers, authentication credentials, and other options to tailor your requests.

Try HTTPie

Testsigma

Testsigma is an automated API testing tool that helps developers write and validate tests in real-time. Its low-code approach to writing and executing tests makes it a perfect tool, even for those without experience writing and executing tests.

Testsigma allows you to write tests that run automatically across your API’s lifecycle. Testsigma also integrates natively with tools like Jenkins and Circle, making it easy to manage your APIs. 

Testsigma Key Features 

• Real-Time API validation: Testsigma simplifies the process of building and validating complex assertions in real-time, making it easy for users to test APIs efficiently.
• Detailed reporting: In the event of test failures, Testsigma provides detailed reports, including screenshots and complete logs that offer insights into the root cause of the issues encountered during testing.
• Data-driven API testing: Testsigma allows testing different scenarios by storing input data as test data types. 

Try Testsigma

Firecamp

Firecamp is designed to streamline API development, testing, and debugging. It allows you to choose your preferred client for the API stack, reducing complexities and development time. 

Firecamp allows users to test and mock various APIs while sending requests in multiple formats, including HTTP, GraphQL, SocketIO, and WebSocket.

Firecamp empowers users to leverage JavaScript to define pre and post-execution actions for test cases, enhancing customization and allowing for the definition of script scope for efficient test reuse.

Firecamp Key Features 

• Supports authentication: With Firecamp, you can quickly authenticate requests for your REST clients using authentication tokens and API keys, ensuring secure interactions with API endpoints.
• Integrates with Postman: Firecamp enables smooth integration with Postman, allowing users to import data directly from Postman to streamline the test writing and execution processes.

Try Firecamp

Httpiness

Httpiness is a slalom API testing tool for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Its clean UI simplifies making multiple requests and sending requests for testing. It can conduct security scans on APIs to detect vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. 

Httpiness Key Features 

• Structured URLs: Httpiness has a built-in feature that structures URLs at every keystroke. 
• Supports third-party collections: Httpiness imports and converts Postman JSON Collections for processing. 
• Displays the whole request in a single view: Httpiness consolidates all parts of a request into a single view, eliminating the need to navigate through multiple tabs.

Try Httpiness

Assertible

Assertible provides an easy way to test and monitor your web services and is ideal for integrated testing in continuous delivery/integration pipelines. The tool offers simple but powerful assertions to ensure you ship healthy web apps and APIs. 

Assertible automatically runs the same tests in staging and production environments. This approach reduces bugs, as the tests are consistent across environments. 

Connect Assertible with platforms like Slack, which will send notifications whenever your app or API fails. You can also integrate with GitHub for flawless monitoring when you make new commits or pushes. 

Assertible Key Features

• Validation after deployment: Assertible supports you through every stage of your application’s lifecycle, ensuring continuous validation.
• Domain-specific tests for critical endpoints: Create specific tests with Assertible to track the performance of your API and easily identify failures.

Try Assertible

Apache JMeter

Apache JMeter is a Java-based open-source software for load testing performance and functional behavior. It was initially used for testing web applications but has now expanded to other test functions.

Apache JMeter is used to test performance on both static and dynamic resources, including dynamic web applications. It can simulate various load types to analyze performance and test the strength of servers, networks, or objects.

Apache JMeter can test the load and performance of different protocols, applications, and servers. The supported components include SOAP/REST Webservices, web (Java, PHP, NodeJS, ASP.NET, etc.,) Java objects, FTP, shell scripts, and mail (SMTP, IMAP, POP3). It also supports caching and offline analysis/replaying of test results.

Apache JMeter Key Features

• Recording: Apache JMeter IDE allows you to record programs from browsers and native applications, helping you build automated tests and debug any issues you encounter.
• Multi-Threading Framework: Apache JMeter enables the creation of virtual users or threads to sample concurrent actions. It supports simultaneous sampling of different functions by separate thread groups.
• Customizable Platform: Apache JMeter offers pluggable samplers for unlimited testing and Scriptable Samplers compatible with Groovy and BeanShell.
• Integration and Plugins: Apache JMeter provides visualization and data analysis plugins for customization and scalability. It supports continuous integration through tools like Maven, Gradle, and Jenkins.

Try Apache JMeter

Swagger

Swagger offers professional yet simple tools for creating large-scale API designs and documents. It interacts with APIs throughout their lifecycle using OpenAPI, AsyncAPI, and JSON Schema. 

Swagger provides a customizable UI that allows users to visualize API resources and interact with them easily without implementing logic. The UI is user-friendly, with categorized documentation for easy resource navigation.

Swagger is compatible with the organization’s existing tool stack and offers native integration with Amazon API Gateway, Microsoft Azure API Management, AWS Lambda, Apigee API Management, and IBM API Connect.

Swagger lets you comment in real-time and conduct issue tracking close to the editor to foster collaboration across multiple teams. It also syncs API definitions with source control repositories and supports documentation versioning.

Swagger Key Features

• Open Source Editor: The Swagger Editor is an open-source tool that supports multiple API specifications and serialization formats. It provides instant visualization and can be run locally or on the web.
• Standardization: Smart error feedback and syntax auto-completion within the editor ensure quality and style consistency for teams using multiple API standards for design.

Try Swagger

Top Postman Alternatives Comparision

Here, we compare top Postman alternatives based on pricing, platform compatibility, API types, and functionality.

API Testing Tool	Monthly Pricing/User	Platform Compatibility	API Types	Functionality
SoapUI	Custom	Windows, macOS, Linux	REST, SOAP, GraphQL, JMS	API mocking, scriptless testing
RapidAPI	Open-source	Mac	REST, SOAP, KAFKA, GraphQL	Security testing, CI/CD
Katalon Studio	Free plan, $175	Windows, macOS, Linux	REST, GraphQL,  SOAP	Low-code, full-code scripting
Insomnia	Free plan, $5	Windows, Mac, Ubuntu,	REST, SOAP, GraphQL	API debugging, live preview
Advanced Rest Client	Open-source	Windows, Mac, Linux	REST	Interoperability, workspace
Hoppscotch	Free	Web-based	REST, GraphQL, Websocket	Search and command palette, pre-request scripts
Testfully	$5	Windows, Mac, Linux, web	REST, GraphQL, XML	Collaboration, request editor
HTTPie	Free	Mac, Windows, Linux	HTTPS, JSON	CLI, auto-save
Testsigma	Custom	Cloud-based	REST	Auto-healing scripts, AI-driven testing
Firecamp	Free and $49	Windows, Mac, Ubuntu, web	REST, GraphQL, WebSocket	API documentation, CI/CD, CLI, variables
Httpiness	Open-source	Windows, Mac	HTTPS APIs	Simplified UI, structured URL
Assertible	Free plan, $25	Windows, macOS, Linux	Web APIs	Post-deploy smoke tests, CI/CD
JMeter	Open-source	Windows, macOS, Linux	SOAP, REST, HTTP, HTTPS	Command-line mode, multi-threading, visualization plugin
Swagger	Free plan, $23	Web	REST	API testing and documentation, intelligent auto-completion

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