Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Postman vs Shields.io: What are the differences?
Accessibility: Postman is a comprehensive API testing tool that allows users to test APIs directly within the app, whereas Shields.io is a service for generating badges for various purposes, primarily to display information in a visual form on websites and GitHub README files.
Customization Options: Postman offers advanced customization options for tests, environments, and workflows with features like scripts, variables, and test assertions, while Shields.io focuses on generating badges with limited customizability in terms of design and information displayed.
Real-time Collaboration: Postman allows team members to collaborate in real-time on API development and testing, with features like shared workspaces and version control, unlike Shields.io, which is primarily a self-serve badge generation service without collaboration features.
Automation Capabilities: Postman provides robust automation capabilities through its collection runner, Newman CLI, and monitoring features, enabling users to automate API testing and monitoring workflows, whereas Shields.io does not offer automation features as its main function is badge generation.
Offline Work: Postman offers a desktop application for users to work offline and sync their work when internet connectivity is available, ensuring flexibility in use, whereas Shields.io operates solely as an online service, requiring internet access to generate and display badges.
Extensibility: Postman supports integrations with third-party tools and services through its extensive library of integrations and APIs, enabling users to extend the functionality of the tool, which is not a feature provided by Shields.io, as it focuses on badge generation exclusively.
In Summary, Postman excels in API testing and collaboration with advanced customization and automation features, while Shields.io specializes in badge generation for visual representation on websites and README files.
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.
OpenAPI is an excellent tool for creating interactive and hosted documents when releasing an API to the public. We will leverage this, specifically for the public facing APIs that customers can integrate into (to automate creating projects and storing experiment data). Postman is more complicated to share with others and is not as rich for documentation.
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 Shields.io
- Easiest way to create lovely badges4
- Easy & Awesome2
- Open source1
- Chef integration1
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
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
