Kong vs Postman vs Runscope

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Kong

598
1.4K
+ 1
135
Postman

86.2K
73.1K
+ 1
1.8K
Runscope

132
170
+ 1
60
Advice on Kong, Postman, and Runscope
Needs advice
on
PostmanPostmanApiaryApiary
and
Swagger UISwagger UI

From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"

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Replies (3)
Jagdeep Singh
Tech Lead at ucreate.it · | 8 upvotes · 339.6K views

I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).

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Sadik Ay
Recommends
on
PostmanPostman

I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.

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I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.

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Decisions about Kong, Postman, and Runscope
Prateek Mittal
Fullstack Engineer| Ruby | React JS | gRPC at Ex Bookmyshow | Furlenco | Shopmatic · | 4 upvotes · 253.6K views

Istio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn-keyIstio based on powerful Envoy whereas Kong based on Nginx. Istio is K8S native as well it's actively developed when k8s was successfully accepted with production-ready apps whereas Kong slowly migrated to start leveraging K8s. Istio has an inbuilt turn key solution with Rancher whereas Kong completely lacks here. Traffic distribution in Istio can be done via canary, a/b, shadowing, HTTP headers, ACL, whitelist whereas in Kong it's limited to canary, ACL, blue-green, proxy caching. Istio has amazing community support which is visible via Github stars or releases when comparing both.

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Stephen Fox
Artificial Intelligence Fellow · | 1 upvote · 301.2K views

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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Pros of Kong
Pros of Postman
Pros of Runscope
  • 37
    Easy to maintain
  • 32
    Easy to install
  • 25
    Flexible
  • 20
    Great performance
  • 5
    Api blueprint
  • 4
    Custom Plugins
  • 3
    Kubernetes-native
  • 2
    Security
  • 2
    Agnostic
  • 2
    Has a good plugin infrastructure
  • 1
    Documentation is clear
  • 1
    Very customizable
  • 1
    Load balancing
  • 489
    Easy to use
  • 369
    Great tool
  • 276
    Makes developing rest api's easy peasy
  • 156
    Easy setup, looks good
  • 144
    The best api workflow out there
  • 53
    History feature
  • 53
    It's the best
  • 44
    Adds real value to my workflow
  • 43
    Great interface that magically predicts your needs
  • 35
    The best in class app
  • 12
    Can save and share script
  • 10
    Fully featured without looking cluttered
  • 8
    Global/Environment Variables
  • 8
    Collections
  • 8
    Option to run scrips
  • 7
    Shareable Collections
  • 7
    Dead simple and useful. Excellent
  • 7
    Dark theme easy on the eyes
  • 6
    Great integration with newman
  • 6
    Awesome customer support
  • 5
    Simple
  • 5
    The test script is useful
  • 5
    Documentation
  • 4
    Saves responses
  • 4
    Easy as pie
  • 4
    Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,3
  • 4
    This has simplified my testing significantly
  • 3
    API-network
  • 3
    Mocking API calls with predefined response
  • 3
    I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis
  • 2
    Runner
  • 2
    Easy to setup, test and provides test storage
  • 2
    Postman Runner CI Integration
  • 2
    Graph
  • 2
    Now supports GraphQL
  • 2
    Continuous integration using newman
  • 2
    Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable
  • 1
    <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>
  • 17
    Great features
  • 15
    Easy to use
  • 4
    Nicely priced
  • 4
    Free plan
  • 2
    No install needed - runs on cloud
  • 2
    Decent
  • 1
    Collections
  • 1
    Dead simple and useful. Excellent
  • 1
    Awesome customer support
  • 1
    Import scripts from sources including Postman
  • 1
    Shareable Collections
  • 1
    Global & Collection level variables
  • 1
    Graphical view of response times historically
  • 1
    Integrations - StatusPage, PagerDuty, HipChat, Victorop
  • 1
    Run tests from multiple locations across globe
  • 1
    Schedule test collections to auto-run at intervals
  • 1
    Auto Re-run failed scheduled tests before notifying
  • 1
    Makes developing REST APIs easy
  • 1
    History feature - call history and response history
  • 1
    Restrict access by teams
  • 1
    Fully featured without looking cluttered
  • 1
    Can save and share scripts

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Cons of Kong
Cons of Postman
Cons of Runscope
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    • 10
      Stores credentials in HTTP
    • 9
      Bloated features and UI
    • 8
      Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens
    • 7
      Poor GraphQL support
    • 5
      Expensive
    • 3
      Can't prompt for per-request variables
    • 3
      Not free after 5 users
    • 1
      Import swagger
    • 1
      Support websocket
    • 1
      Import curl
      Be the first to leave a con

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      - No public GitHub repository available -
      - No public GitHub repository available -

      What is Kong?

      Kong is a scalable, open source API Layer (also known as an API Gateway, or API Middleware). Kong controls layer 4 and 7 traffic and is extended through Plugins, which provide extra functionality and services beyond the core platform.

      What is Postman?

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

      What is Runscope?

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

      Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

      What companies use Kong?
      What companies use Postman?
      What companies use Runscope?

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      What tools integrate with Kong?
      What tools integrate with Postman?
      What tools integrate with Runscope?

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      What are some alternatives to Kong, Postman, and Runscope?
      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.
      Amazon API Gateway
      Amazon API Gateway handles all the tasks involved in accepting and processing up to hundreds of thousands of concurrent API calls, including traffic management, authorization and access control, monitoring, and API version management.
      Ambassador
      Map services to arbitrary URLs in a single, declarative YAML file. Configure routes with CORS support, circuit breakers, timeouts, and more. Replace your Kubernetes ingress controller. Route gRPC, WebSockets, or HTTP.
      Azure API Management
      Today's innovative enterprises are adopting API architectures to accelerate growth. Streamline your work across hybrid and multi-cloud environments with a single place for managing all your APIs.
      Tyk Cloud
      Tyk is a leading Open Source API Gateway and Management Platform, featuring an API gateway, analytics, developer portal and dashboard. We power billions of transactions for thousands of innovative organisations.
      See all alternatives