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Postman vs Swagger UI: What are the differences?
Developers describe Postman as "Only complete API development environment". Postman is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide. On the other hand, Swagger UI is detailed as "dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation". 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.
Postman and Swagger UI are primarily classified as "API" and "Documentation as a Service &" tools respectively.
"Easy to use" is the top reason why over 463 developers like Postman, while over 33 developers mention "Open Source" as the leading cause for choosing Swagger UI.
PedidosYa, Movielala, and Webedia are some of the popular companies that use Postman, whereas Swagger UI is used by Clever, triGo GmbH, and Hootsuite. Postman has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1725 company stacks & 2166 developers stacks; compared to Swagger UI, which is listed in 203 company stacks and 101 developer stacks.
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 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.
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.
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 use488
- Great tool368
- Makes developing rest api's easy peasy275
- Easy setup, looks good155
- The best api workflow out there143
- History feature53
- It's the best53
- Adds real value to my workflow44
- Great interface that magically predicts your needs42
- The best in class app34
- Can save and share script11
- Fully featured without looking cluttered9
- Collections7
- Option to run scrips7
- Global/Environment Variables7
- Dead simple and useful. Excellent6
- Shareable Collections6
- Dark theme easy on the eyes6
- Awesome customer support5
- Great integration with newman5
- Simple4
- The test script is useful4
- Documentation4
- Easy as pie3
- Saves responses3
- Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,33
- This has simplified my testing significantly3
- API-network2
- I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis2
- Mocking API calls with predefined response2
- Easy to setup, test and provides test storage1
- Graph1
- Postman Runner CI Integration1
- Now supports GraphQL1
- Continuous integration using newman1
- Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable1
- <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>0
- Runner0
Pros of Swagger UI
- Open Source48
- 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
- Bloated features and UI9
- Stores credentials in HTTP9
- Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens8
- Poor GraphQL support7
- Expensive5
- Can't prompt for per-request variables3
- Not free after 5 users3
- Import curl1
- Import swagger1
- Support websocket1
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
