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Postman vs Swagger Codegen: What are the differences?
Introduction
Postman and Swagger Codegen are both popular tools used in API development. While both tools serve similar purposes, they have key differences that set them apart. In this Markdown code, we will explore and highlight the main differences between Postman and Swagger Codegen.
Architecture and Purpose: Postman is primarily used as a collaboration platform for API development. It provides features like API documentation, testing, monitoring, and sharing. On the other hand, Swagger Codegen is a code generation tool that allows developers to generate client libraries, server stubs, and API documentation from OpenAPI/Swagger specifications.
User Interface: Postman offers a comprehensive user interface with a visually appealing workspace. It allows users to visually create and edit APIs, set up environments, and execute requests. Swagger Codegen, on the other hand, is a command-line tool that operates through the terminal, making it more suitable for developers comfortable with command-line interfaces.
API Design and Collaboration: Postman provides a user-friendly interface for designing APIs and collaborating with team members. It allows users to create collections, define endpoints, and set up parameters and headers easily. Swagger Codegen, on the other hand, focuses more on generating code from existing API specifications and may require additional tools for collaborative API design.
Code Generation: Swagger Codegen excels at generating code based on OpenAPI/Swagger specifications. It supports multiple programming languages and can generate client libraries and server stubs, reducing development time. Postman, while offering code snippets for various languages, is not primarily focused on code generation.
Testing and Automation: Postman provides extensive testing capabilities with features like assertions, test scripts, and automated test runs. It enables developers to validate API responses and test different scenarios easily. Swagger Codegen, being primarily a code generation tool, does not offer in-built testing features like Postman.
Integration with Development Workflow: Postman integrates well with various development workflows and can be seamlessly integrated with popular tools like Git, Jenkins, and CI/CD pipelines. It allows developers to incorporate API testing and monitoring into their existing workflows. Swagger Codegen, being a code generation tool, may require additional steps for integration into development workflows.
In summary, Postman is a versatile collaboration platform that focuses on API design, documentation, and testing, while Swagger Codegen is primarily used for code generation from OpenAPI/Swagger specifications.
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 Swagger Codegen
- 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