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Pactflow vs Postman: What are the differences?

Pactflow and Postman are two popular tools in the software development industry. Although they both serve the purpose of API testing, there are several key differences between them.

  1. Testing Scope: Pactflow focuses on contract testing, where service consumers and providers agree on a contract and verify its implementation. It allows testing at the integration level to ensure end-to-end compatibility. On the other hand, Postman provides a comprehensive platform for API testing, including functionality to create and run tests, monitor performance, and collaborate with team members. It supports a broader range of testing scenarios beyond just contract testing.

  2. Workflow Integration: Pactflow integrates seamlessly with continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. It enables automated deployment validation by checking the contracts during the build and release process. Postman, on the other hand, offers collaboration features and integrations with popular development tools like Jira, Slack, and GitHub. It focuses on enhancing the overall API development workflow and team collaboration.

  3. Language Support: Pactflow supports multiple languages such as Ruby, JavaScript, and JVM languages. It provides bindings and plugins for different platforms, making it easier to implement contract testing in various technologies. Postman, on the other hand, supports a wide range of programming languages, allowing developers to write tests using their preferred language.

  4. Environment Configuration: Pactflow allows the configuration of test environments, enabling the simulation of real-world scenarios that are crucial for contract testing. It provides tools to manage different environments and handle environment-specific variables. Postman also supports environment configuration but primarily focuses on managing API request and response variables for easy testing and automation.

  5. Mocking and Virtualization: Pactflow allows the creation of mock services that simulate the behavior of the API provider. This helps the consumers to effectively test their API integration without depending on the actual provider. Postman, on the other hand, provides virtualization capabilities, allowing developers to create mock servers for testing purposes. It enables teams to simulate API responses and test different scenarios without relying on the actual backend systems.

  6. Pricing and Licensing: Pactflow and Postman have different pricing models. Pactflow follows a subscription-based pricing model, with different tiers based on the usage and requirements of the organization. Postman offers a freemium model, where a basic version of the tool is available for free, and additional features and capabilities can be accessed through paid plans. The pricing model and licensing options can vary, so it is important to evaluate based on the specific needs and budget of the organization.

In summary, Pactflow focuses on contract testing and integration with CI/CD pipelines, supporting multiple languages, while Postman offers a broader range of API testing capabilities, collaboration features, and virtualization options, with a freemium pricing model.

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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 · 390.3K 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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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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Sadik Ay
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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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Decisions about Pactflow and Postman
Stephen Fox
Artificial Intelligence Fellow · | 1 upvote · 344.4K 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 Pactflow
Pros of Postman
    Be the first to leave a pro
    • 490
      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
      It's the best
    • 53
      History feature
    • 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
      Collections
    • 8
      Option to run scrips
    • 8
      Global/Environment Variables
    • 7
      Shareable Collections
    • 7
      Dead simple and useful. Excellent
    • 7
      Dark theme easy on the eyes
    • 6
      Awesome customer support
    • 6
      Great integration with newman
    • 5
      Documentation
    • 5
      Simple
    • 5
      The test script is useful
    • 4
      Saves responses
    • 4
      This has simplified my testing significantly
    • 4
      Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,3
    • 4
      Easy as pie
    • 3
      API-network
    • 3
      I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis
    • 3
      Mocking API calls with predefined response
    • 2
      Now supports GraphQL
    • 2
      Postman Runner CI Integration
    • 2
      Easy to setup, test and provides test storage
    • 2
      Continuous integration using newman
    • 2
      Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable
    • 2
      Runner
    • 2
      Graph
    • 1
      <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>

    Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions

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

      Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

      What is Pactflow?

      Deploy into production with impunity, and have visibility into the integration of your stack. It ensures that all components are communicating correctly before a release, without costly and brittle integration tests. We integrate with Pact and Spring Cloud Contract, enabling powerful collaboration features for the enterprise.

      What is Postman?

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

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      What companies use Pactflow?
      What companies use Postman?
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