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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.
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?"
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).
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.
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.
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.
Pros of Postman
- Easy to use490
- Great tool369
- Makes developing rest api's easy peasy276
- Easy setup, looks good156
- The best api workflow out there144
- It's the best53
- History feature53
- Adds real value to my workflow44
- Great interface that magically predicts your needs43
- The best in class app35
- Can save and share script12
- Fully featured without looking cluttered10
- Collections8
- Option to run scrips8
- Global/Environment Variables8
- Shareable Collections7
- Dead simple and useful. Excellent7
- Dark theme easy on the eyes7
- Awesome customer support6
- Great integration with newman6
- Documentation5
- Simple5
- The test script is useful5
- Saves responses4
- This has simplified my testing significantly4
- Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,34
- Easy as pie4
- API-network3
- I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis3
- Mocking API calls with predefined response3
- Now supports GraphQL2
- Postman Runner CI Integration2
- Easy to setup, test and provides test storage2
- Continuous integration using newman2
- Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable2
- Runner2
- Graph2
- <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>1
Pros of RAML
- API Specification15
- Human Readable7
- API Documentation6
- Design Patterns & Code Reuse3
- API Modeling2
- Automatic Generation of Mule flow2
- Unit Testing2
- API Mocking1
- SDK Generation1
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Cons of Postman
- Stores credentials in HTTP10
- Bloated features and UI9
- Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens8
- Poor GraphQL support7
- Expensive5
- Not free after 5 users3
- Can't prompt for per-request variables3
- Import swagger1
- Support websocket1
- Import curl1