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Postman vs ReadMe.io vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?
Introduction:
In the realm of API documentation and testing, tools like Postman, ReadMe.io, and Swagger UI play crucial roles. Despite their similar functionalities, each platform has its unique features and strengths. Below are the key differences between Postman, ReadMe.io, and Swagger UI.
Functionality: Postman is primarily known for its robust API testing capabilities, allowing users to send requests to APIs and analyze responses. ReadMe.io focuses on providing in-depth API documentation, including code snippets, and interactive examples. Meanwhile, Swagger UI is more of a design-first approach, enabling developers to define APIs using the OpenAPI Specification and then visualizing and interacting with them in a user-friendly interface.
Collaboration Features: Postman offers team collaboration features such as shared collections and integrated version control, making it a preferred choice for teams working on API projects. ReadMe.io provides advanced collaboration tools, including team permissions, feedback loops, and versioning, which are vital for maintaining high-quality API documentation. In contrast, Swagger UI lacks built-in collaboration features, making it less suitable for large team-based projects.
User Interface (UI): Postman boasts a user-friendly interface with a variety of tools and tabs for organizing and managing API requests. ReadMe.io focuses on creating visually appealing and easy-to-navigate documentation websites for APIs, emphasizing user experience. Swagger UI is more geared towards visualizing API specifications in a clean and structured format, keeping the focus on the API design itself.
Extensibility: Postman allows users to extend its functionality through the use of scripts, custom integrations, and environments, enabling advanced automation and customization options. ReadMe.io offers integrations with various third-party tools and services, enhancing the overall API documentation experience. On the other hand, Swagger UI lacks the same level of extensibility, limiting users in terms of customization and integration capabilities.
Pricing Model: Postman offers a freemium model with limitations on the number of API calls and team collaboration features in the free version, while the paid plans provide additional functionality and support. ReadMe.io follows a subscription-based pricing model, offering different tiers based on the number of users and features required. Swagger UI, being open-source, is free to use and customize according to the specific needs of the users.
In Summary, when choosing between Postman, ReadMe.io, and Swagger UI, consider your priorities regarding API testing, documentation, collaboration, user interface, extensibility, and pricing model to determine the most suitable tool for your project.
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 ReadMe.io
- Great UI18
- Easy15
- Customizable10
- Cute mascot10
- Looks great and is fun to use8
- It's friggin awesome5
- Make sample API calls inside the docs3
Pros of Swagger UI
- Open Source49
- Can execute api calls from the documentation34
- Free to use29
- Customizable19
- Easy to implement in .Net14
- Mature, clean spec13
- API Visualization12
- Coverage9
- Scaffolding6
- Easy to use6
- Vibrant and active community5
- Elegant4
- Adopted by tm forum api3
- Clear for React2
- Api1
- Can deploy API to AWS API Gateway and AWS Lambda1
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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
Cons of ReadMe.io
- Support is awful4
- No backup and restore capability3
- Important parts of the CSS are locked2
- Document structure is severely restricted2
- Full of bugs2
- No notifications of edits by other users2
- Supports only two documents plus a blog1
- Does not support pre-request scripts1
- Random pages display content of other pages instead1
- Review and comment functionality is hard to work with1
- Navigation in user-facing copy is spotty1
- All admins have full editing rights1
Cons of Swagger UI
- Need to learn YAML and RAML3
- Documentation doesn't look that good2
- Doesn't generate code snippets in different languages1
- You don’t actually get in-line error highlighting1
- Does not support hypermedia1
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