Postman vs RapidAPI Testing | Which is Right for Your Project?

API-First development is widely used in modern web application development. Where APIs are designed during the software design phase. APIs are designed to serve a single functionality, and later these APIs are integrated to provide the end-to-end functionality. This approach makes the delivery faster and smoother. It also allows enough time to test the features. API testing can be carried out to test the data and logical operations. When it comes to API Design and Testing Postman and RapidAPI are popular tools. These tools have many unique capabilities to serve the end user’s needs. To understand the best fit for your project, you may need to analyze these tools in detail. Let’s compare Postman vs RapidAPI.

Postman vs RapidAPI Testing – Overview

Postman and RapidAPI are designed to accelerate API-first development and help reduce the complexity involved in the design, development, and testing of the API. Both of these tools provide many unique features that can cater to the different needs of an organization. They both offer API testing capabilities and many development capabilities. Postman vs RapidAPI – Let’s understand them in detail.

What is Postman?

Postman is a platform for building, using, and testing the API’s. It makes the API development lifecycle easier and faster. It provides the platform to collaborate, develop, and test the API in a streamlined way. It helps to design, document, and test the APIs. Postman enhances the governance with a shift-left development approach. Postman supports API testing with manual and automation approaches. Manual testing can be done using UI and automation testing can be carried out with JavaScript coding.

On the negative side, this tool lacks the no-code automation feature, which is more advanced and trending in the software testing industry. Automation can be carried out only by writing the script manually using JavaScript. Additionally, no AI/ML capabilities for test automation. 

What is RapidAPI?

RapidAPI is a platform that provides the capability to design, develop, test, maintain, and publish the APIs. It provides a unified interface to store and access a wide range of APIs, which includes social media APIs, Payment gateway APIs, etc.  Additionally, it offers UI and code-based testing features for APIs. These API tests can be further integrated into CI/CD pipelines to make the delivery faster. 

RapidAPI supports testing of API using Manual or automation approach. The automation approach has two options: form-based and code-based. Form-based automation scripts may be good for basic testing; however, you need to rely on the code-based automation testing feature to automate complex scenarios.

On the negative side, this tool lacks the low-code feature, and AI/ML capabilities are not integrated as of today. As this tool has many features bundled into a single platform which belongs to both development and testing, testers may find it challenging to understand all of its features. 

Postman vs RapidAPI – Alternative Tool

Postman and RapidAPI help to test the APIs only, UI based tests or functional tests cannot be done using these tools. When it comes to automation testing, most of the scenarios require a combination of UI and API scenarios. API integration in UI testing also helps in setting up pre-requisite data and cleaning up the data after tests. This can be a major limitation if you are looking to increase the automation coverage. 

Testsigma can be considered a good alternative to Postman and RapidAPI as it has features that can support API testing. Interestingly, Testsigma supports features to call the APIs within the end-to-end testing. Testsigma is known for its simplicity and user-friendly UI, many complex scenarios that include both API and UI test cases can be automated using the simple user interface. Later these tests can be integrated into the CI/CD pipelines. Testsigma also offers integration with many CI/CD tools like Jenkins, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, etc.

Testsigma also offers many AI capabilities to reduce maintenance efforts. These capabilities are not provided by popular API testing tools today. The debugging features are more structured and advanced in Testsigma. 

Testsigma is a more budget-friendly tool, it can fit into any type of organization. Testsigma is a good alternative for organizations focused on automation testing and API testing. Additionally, as Testsigma offers many different types of testing under a single umbrella it may be easy to have one tool to cater to all testing needs rather than having separate tools for each testing requirement.

Postman and RapidAPI testing – Similarities

Postman and RapidAPI have many similarities that help speed up API-first development. 

API Testing can be performed using both of these tools. Tools also offer manual and automation of API testing. 

Automation of API testing can be done using popular scripting languages like JavaScript. You can validate the response, response code, JSON body, response schema, etv. 

Both of these tools have a Rich Interface to send requests like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. 

APIs can be exported as collections; this helps to share and manage the APIs across different platforms. 

These tools also encourage collaboration. 

Monitoring and Debugging is another great functionality these tools offer. Whenever there are API failures or test failures these tools produce additional logs to find and fix them.

Postman vs RapidAPI Testing: What are the differences?

In the previous section, we have seen the similarities and a few features. When it comes to choosing the right tool for your project that may not be enough, however comparing them in the table might help to make the right decision. The table below makes the side-by-side comparison of Postman vs RapidAPI and helps to make the right decision on the right tool.

Feature	Postman	RapidAPI
Overview	Postman is a popular tool for designing, developing, and testing the APIs with collaboration.	RapidAPI is used to design, develop, test, maintain, and publish the APIs. It allows users to store and access the APIs in a centralized place and reduces the complexity.
Cost/License	License:  Commercial Cost:Free VersionBasic version: $14/month/userProfessional: $29/month/userEnterprise: $49/month/user	License:  Commercial Cost:Free Version Enterprise Version: Cost not disclosed Additional cost for Add-ons
Testing and Automation	Supports both manual and automation testing. Manual testing can be performed using the user interface. Automation requires writing the code in JavaScript language.	Supports both manual and automation testing. Manual and automation testing can be performed using the user interface. Automation can also be performed using the programming language editor.
Platform supported	WindowsMac	SaaS application. Can be accessed using the browser
Integration with Third-Party Libraries	Postman offers integration with third-party libraries. However, comparing other tools, the Postman integration is limited to only a few tools.	RapidAPI provides a large marketplace to search and integrate third-party libraries. It is one of the unique features of Rapid API.
Collaboration and Teamwork	Postman provides many collaboration features such as team workspaces, version control, and role-based access controls.	RapidAPI lacks the collaboration feature. Some users opinionated that it is more individual-focused and difficult to collaborate.
Continuous Integration	Postman tests can be integrated with many popular CI/CD tools. The Newman tool can be used with an exported collection set to run tests in the command line. Additionally, Postman supports different types of reporters for continuous integrations.	RapidAPI has limited capability for integration with the CI/CD pipeline. It may not support all popular continuous integration tools.
Learning Curve	Postman features are powerful and Simple. The user interface has set an example for many other API testing tools. Because of its simplicity, the self-explanatory interface learning curve is moderate. However, you may need to have a basic understanding of scripting knowledge to automate the API testing in Postman.	RapidAPI Testing also offers a user-friendly interface however the learning curve is deeper than Postman as it has many other capabilities than just API testing. Third-party API integration and marketplace functionalities make RapidAPI complex and increase the learning curve.
Community and Support	Postman has over 30 million registered users and more than 500,000 organizations are using it . Because of its large consumer base, it is also having good community support. Additionally, it offers on-demand technical support for enterprise customers.	RapidAPI has a considerably smaller user base (approximately 5 million Ref: RapidAPI Web) due to this, community support is considerably less. However, it has on-demand support for the enterprise customers.
No-code Automation Support	Postman doesn’t support no-code automation. Testers need to write the automation script in the basic JavaScript programming language.	It offers a no-code feature for basic use cases. However, for advanced use cases, one needs to rely on code-based automation testing.
Documentation	Postman documentation can be improved and may not be clear. Many sections don’t have examples; it may be difficult for the beginner to understand the advanced features.	RapidAPI documentation is better compared to Postman. However, many users have opined that documentation could be improved with real-time examples and more explanation.
Key Features	Postman features are API Designing, Testing, and Development. The collaboration feature is praised by many users. It also offers continuous delivery platform integration. Reporting is good in Postman. Transparent pricing structure is another notable feature	RapidAPI provides many advanced features like One Dashboard for all of your needs, Design, and developing API. Manual and automation testing. Marketplace and API integration features are unique in RapidAPI.
Key Limitations	No support for the no-code automation Performance issues are observed in recent versions Difficult to automate the API tests There is no support for UI-based functional testing Integration tools are limited The free version has only basic features	Limited support for no-code automation. The tool may be complex to understand for beginnersLimited support for CI/CD pipeline integration. Performance varies at times The free version has only basic support. No transparent pricing

Postman vs RapidAPI Testing: Which is Better?

Both Postman and RapidAPI have many distinct features. These tools help in the API development lifecycle. As part of API development, they provide testing capabilities. However, these tools can serve as a one-stop solution for API development and generating API documentation. 

Postman is favored compared to RapidAPI considering its user base and community support etc. Postman doesn’t offer a good marketplace and integration feature when compared to RapidAPI. Both of these tools have many limitations and advantages. To decide on the better tool, you may have to list down all the requirements and evaluate them. 

If you are looking for a tool specifically for API testing, you may need more than what they offer. As mentioned in an earlier section, in terms of API testing – these tools lack many features such as no support for UI testing, lack of no-code automation feature, etc.  If an organization is focusing on automation testing there will be many scenarios that can make automation testing faster and more reliable. If you combine both UI and API, both of these tools lack such features. Testsigma can help in handling such complex scenarios with a friendly user interface. Testsigma’s no-code capability doesn’t require any programming language to write the automation scripts. Many complex configuration and integration scenarios are simplified with visual forms. Testsigma can accelerate the automation testing multiple folds and increase the Return on Investment for the organization. 

Conclusion

The API-first approach is widely incorporated by many organizations to simplify the software development process. In the API-first approach, APIs are designed in the initial stage and integrated at a later stage. Using this approach, each API can be tested independently even if there is a dependency on other API’s – using modern tools, dependent API responses can be mocked and tested. However, Testing APIs manually may not add more value, as the API needs to be tested repetitively until the release in different environments. Additionally, Combining UI and API testing can provide an advantage over just testing the API alone. Though Postman and RapidAPI provide many good features these tools may not be enough if your focus is on software testing. Testsigma is a modern test automation tool that is designed to overcome challenges in other tools. It offers a wide range of features such as No-code automation, API testing, UI testing, Visual regression testing, etc. While choosing the right tool you should consider Testsigma as it is the more powerful and budget-friendly tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can Postman replace RapidAPI?

Though Postman and RapidAPI have many similarities, not all the features are similar. Considering many unique features in RapidAPI such as marketplace, plug-in integration, etc. It may be difficult to replace RapidAPI with Postman completely but it can be replaced by compromising the features.

Which is the best alternative to Postman for API Test Automation?

The Best alternative for you will depend on your unique needs and requirements. But, if you are look for an API test automation tool that simplifies test creation process and also lets you automate your end-to-end UI tests for web, mobile and desktop applications, Testsigma is one tool you should definitely consider..

Does Postman have AI/ML capabilities?

Postman doesn’t have AI/ML capabilities.