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Postman vs RAML: What are the differences?

## Key Differences between Postman and RAML

Postman and RAML are both valuable tools in the API development process, but they serve slightly different purposes. Here are the key differences between the two:

1. **User Interface**: Postman provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to test APIs by sending requests and viewing responses all from within the application. On the other hand, RAML is a specification that focuses more on documenting APIs in a standardized format, rather than providing a testing environment.

2. **Testing Capabilities**: Postman is primarily focused on API testing, with features such as automated testing, scripting, and collection runs. In contrast, RAML does not provide built-in testing capabilities but can be used in conjunction with other tools like Postman for API testing.

3. **Format**: Postman uses a graphical interface where users can create and organize requests, while RAML is a text-based API specification that uses YAML or JSON to define API endpoints, methods, parameters, and responses.

4. **Collaboration**: Postman offers features for team collaboration, such as sharing collections and environments, collaborating in real-time, and version control. RAML, on the other hand, focuses on providing a standardized way to describe APIs, which can facilitate collaboration through clear documentation.

5. **Workflow Integration**: Postman can be integrated with other tools and services such as version control systems, CI/CD pipelines, and API monitoring platforms, making it suitable for incorporating into existing development workflows. RAML, being a specification, can also be integrated into various tools for API design, documentation, and testing.

6. **Community Support**: Postman has a large and active community of users who share collections, scripts, and best practices, making it easy to find resources and solutions to common API testing challenges. RAML also has a community of users and contributors who provide support and resources for utilizing the specification effectively in API development projects.

In Summary, while Postman excels in API testing and collaboration, RAML focuses on standardizing API documentation and design, providing developers with different tools to streamline the API development process.
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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 · 408.5K 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
Recommends
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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 Postman and RAML
Stephen Fox
Artificial Intelligence Fellow · | 1 upvote · 359.2K 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 Postman
Pros of RAML
  • 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>
  • 15
    API Specification
  • 7
    Human Readable
  • 6
    API Documentation
  • 3
    Design Patterns & Code Reuse
  • 2
    API Modeling
  • 2
    Automatic Generation of Mule flow
  • 2
    Unit Testing
  • 1
    API Mocking
  • 1
    SDK Generation

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Cons of Postman
Cons of RAML
  • 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
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    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 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.

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

    What companies use Postman?
    What companies use RAML?
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    What tools integrate with Postman?
    What tools integrate with RAML?

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    What are some alternatives to Postman and RAML?
    Swagger UI
    Swagger UI is a dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation and sandbox from a Swagger-compliant API
    Insomnia REST Client
    Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.
    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.
    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.
    cURL
    Used in command lines or scripts to transfer data. It is also used in cars, television sets, routers, printers, audio equipment, mobile phones, tablets, and is the internet transfer backbone for thousands of software applications affecting billions of humans daily.
    See all alternatives