Insomnia REST Client vs Soap UI

Overview

Soap UI

Stacks241

Followers157

Votes3

Insomnia REST Client

Stacks800

Followers652

Votes44

Insomnia REST Client vs Soap UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

Insomnia REST Client and Soap UI are two popular tools used for testing and interacting with APIs. While both tools serve similar purposes, there are some key differences between them that make each tool more suitable for certain use cases. In this article, we will explore the main differences between Insomnia REST Client and Soap UI in Markdown format.

User Interface: Insomnia REST Client has a modern and intuitive user interface, making it easy for developers to create requests, view responses, and organize multiple APIs. On the other hand, Soap UI has a more comprehensive interface, designed specifically for testing SOAP APIs and handling complex scenarios involving web services.
Request Creation: Insomnia REST Client provides a straightforward way to create HTTP requests by allowing users to specify the HTTP method, URL, headers, and body. It also supports various authentication methods and dynamic variables. In contrast, Soap UI focuses on creating requests for SOAP APIs, where users need to define SOAP action, request envelope, headers, and security settings. It also offers advanced features like assertions and automation for testing SOAP services.
API Documentation: Insomnia REST Client offers built-in support for generating API documentation using OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) specifications. This feature provides detailed information about the API endpoints, request/response formats, parameters, and authentication requirements. In comparison, Soap UI does not have built-in API documentation capabilities and usually requires external tools or manual effort to generate documentation.
Supported Protocols: Insomnia REST Client is primarily designed for testing RESTful APIs and supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It also handles GraphQL, OAuth, and WebSocket protocols. On the other hand, Soap UI is specifically tailored for testing SOAP APIs that use the SOAP protocol over HTTP or HTTPS. It provides extensive support for SOAP envelopes, headers, WSDL files, and testing SOAP-based web services.
Plugins and Integrations: Insomnia REST Client offers a range of plugins and integrations with popular tools like Git, GitHub, Jenkins, and Slack. These integrations enable developers to seamlessly incorporate API testing into their development workflows. In contrast, Soap UI does not have as many pre-built integrations but does offer a plugin framework that allows users to extend its functionality.
Community and Ecosystem: Insomnia REST Client has a growing community and active developer ecosystem, with regular updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements. It also has a cloud-based collaborative platform called Insomnia Designer for team collaboration. On the other hand, Soap UI has been around for a longer time and has a more established community. It has a larger set of resources, tutorials, and community forums for support.

In summary, Insomnia REST Client is a versatile tool for testing RESTful APIs, providing an easy-to-use interface, built-in API documentation, support for various protocols, and integrations with popular tools. On the other hand, Soap UI is a specialized tool for testing SOAP APIs, offering a comprehensive interface, advanced features for SOAP testing, and a well-established community and ecosystem. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements of the API being tested.

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Advice on Soap UI, Insomnia REST Client

Stephen

Artificial Intelligence Fellow

Feb 4, 2020

Decided

Postman supports automation and organization in a way that Insomnia just doesn't. Admittedly, Insomnia makes it slightly easy to query the data that you get back (in a very MongoDB-esque query language) but Postman sets you up to develop the code that you would use in development/testing right in the editor.

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Detailed Comparison

Soap UI	Insomnia REST Client
It is an open source functional Testing tool for API Testing. It supports multiple protocols such as SOAP, REST, HTTP, JMS, AMF and JDBC. It supports functional tests, security tests, and virtualization.	Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.
-	Mac, Windows and Linux;Data import/export;SSL client certificates;Response history;JSONPath and XPath;Preview rendered HTML;Multipart form;Query parameter editor;Configurable proxy;Cloud sync and sharing;Nunjucks templating;Filter requests;Toggle SSL validation;Keyboard shortcuts;Configurable timeout;HAR import;Usable at almost all sizes;Drag-n-drop organization;Responsive interface;Import from curl;
Statistics
Stacks 241	Stacks 800
Followers 157	Followers 652
Votes 3	Votes 44
Pros & Cons
Pros 3 Open source	Pros 16 Easy to work with 11 Great user interface 6 Works with GraphQL 4 Cross platform, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux 3 Opensource Cons 4 Do not have team sharing options 2 Do not store credentials in HTTP

What are some alternatives to Soap UI, Insomnia REST Client?

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

Paw

Paw is a full-featured and beautifully designed Mac app that makes interaction with REST services delightful. Either you are an API maker or consumer, Paw helps you build HTTP requests, inspect the server's response and even generate client code.

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Appwrite

Appwrite's open-source platform lets you add Auth, DBs, Functions and Storage to your product and build any application at any scale, own your data, and use your preferred coding languages and tools.

Runscope

Keep tabs on all aspects of your API's performance with uptime monitoring, integration testing, logging and real-time monitoring.

RAML

RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It's concise - you only write what you need to define - and reusable. It is machine readable API design that is actually human friendly.

Apigee

API management, design, analytics, and security are at the heart of modern digital architecture. The Apigee intelligent API platform is a complete solution for moving business to the digital world.

Hoppscotch

It is a free, fast and beautiful API request builder. It helps you create requests faster, saving precious time on development

Falcor

Falcor lets you represent all your remote data sources as a single domain model via a virtual JSON graph. You code the same way no matter where the data is, whether in memory on the client or over the network on the server.

DuckRails

DuckRails is an open source development tool that helps developer mock API endpoints quickly & dynamically outside the application code.

Related Comparisons

Insomnia REST Client vs Soap UI: What are the differences?

Introduction

User Interface: Insomnia REST Client has a modern and intuitive user interface, making it easy for developers to create requests, view responses, and organize multiple APIs. On the other hand, Soap UI has a more comprehensive interface, designed specifically for testing SOAP APIs and handling complex scenarios involving web services.
Request Creation: Insomnia REST Client provides a straightforward way to create HTTP requests by allowing users to specify the HTTP method, URL, headers, and body. It also supports various authentication methods and dynamic variables. In contrast, Soap UI focuses on creating requests for SOAP APIs, where users need to define SOAP action, request envelope, headers, and security settings. It also offers advanced features like assertions and automation for testing SOAP services.
API Documentation: Insomnia REST Client offers built-in support for generating API documentation using OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) specifications. This feature provides detailed information about the API endpoints, request/response formats, parameters, and authentication requirements. In comparison, Soap UI does not have built-in API documentation capabilities and usually requires external tools or manual effort to generate documentation.
Supported Protocols: Insomnia REST Client is primarily designed for testing RESTful APIs and supports HTTP and HTTPS protocols. It also handles GraphQL, OAuth, and WebSocket protocols. On the other hand, Soap UI is specifically tailored for testing SOAP APIs that use the SOAP protocol over HTTP or HTTPS. It provides extensive support for SOAP envelopes, headers, WSDL files, and testing SOAP-based web services.
Plugins and Integrations: Insomnia REST Client offers a range of plugins and integrations with popular tools like Git, GitHub, Jenkins, and Slack. These integrations enable developers to seamlessly incorporate API testing into their development workflows. In contrast, Soap UI does not have as many pre-built integrations but does offer a plugin framework that allows users to extend its functionality.
Community and Ecosystem: Insomnia REST Client has a growing community and active developer ecosystem, with regular updates, bug fixes, and feature enhancements. It also has a cloud-based collaborative platform called Insomnia Designer for team collaboration. On the other hand, Soap UI has been around for a longer time and has a more established community. It has a larger set of resources, tutorials, and community forums for support.

Insomnia REST Client vs Soap UI

Overview

Insomnia REST Client vs Soap UI: What are the differences?