Top 3 free alternatives of Postman

The very first question we raise here is, What is a Postman actually?

As we all know, Postman is an API platform for building and testing APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create a better API faster. We test the APIs with the help of postman, whether it is giving us a proper data response or giving errors from APIs. We don’t need a ready frontend setup to check our APIs response. Commonly, a backend developer uses Postman to test the APIs without a frontend setup.

So let’s come to the point of today’s discussion, do we have any free alternatives for the postman? And the answer is yes. There are many free alternatives for the postman.

Here are the top 3 free alternatives for the postman.

1) Thunder Client

Thunder Client is a widely used and very popular postman alternative. It is an inbuilt VS code extension for API testing and building. It is a simple and efficient HTTP client. It supports collections as a way to group requests. Additionally, it also supports the concept of environment variables to store and reuse values for many requests. We just need to add an extension in VS code to use it. As it is an inbuilt VS code extension, we wouldn’t need to run a separate tool for API testing and building. This will save you some RAM on your PC.

There are some benefits of the Thunder Client. Like,

• It is a lightweight API Client
• It has a simple, clean & easy to use UI
• It can handle complex responses & show in full screen
• It supports VS Code themes
• It supports the collections & ENV variables

Thunder Client is made with Javascript, Flexbox, Typescript, Ace Editor, Got, NeDB. No JS or CSS frameworks were used.

2) Swagger UI

Swagger UI is another Postman alternative for easier API interaction and testing. It has very well-organized documentation, which is simple to navigate. You can quickly locate APIs and collaborate with them to increase productivity. Swagger UI has no dependencies, so we can use it in any environment, whether it is run locally or online. It is also user-friendly, and it allows end devs to interact with API perforations.

The most advanced feature of swagger UI is it is entirely customizable. We can modify our tool as per the requirements we meet. It makes an existing JSON or YAML document quite interactive. Swagger UI develops a platform that organizes and categorizes our methods like GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE.

Some good things about swagger UI are,

• It has better documentation of API.
• It is user-friendly for non-developer to meet their needs.
• It can iterate through multiple versions of a definition privately.

3) Firecamp

Firecamp is another free and easy-to-use postman alternative for API testing and building. It provides a lot of critical metrics for API testing, like response time, response size, status code and its meaning, and more.

One of the most interesting features of Firecamp is it has the capability to test Websockets and GraphQL into standard REST APIs. We can access Firecamp as a chrome browser extension and a separate application for Windows, Linux, and macOS

Additionally, Firecamp lets you invite up to 3 team members to collaborate in the actual workspace. Firecamp includes a GUI for WebSocket, GraphQL, and Socket.io. We can import postman collections into Firecamp but not postman environment variables.

Firecamp has its own benefits, like,

• As we discussed earlier, it has a dedicated GUI for WebSocket, GraphQL, and Socket.io.
• We can organize multiple API services using collections and focus on one at a time.
• We can import Postman collections.

As conclusion,

Comparing these postman alternatives with each other is so confusing because each of them has its own pros. But we can use all of them to test and build the APIs. As Postman is most commonly used to perform the same tasks, but we can use these alternatives in different situations where it actually suits. We can use Thunder Client as a VS Code extension and can test APIs within VS Code, so we don’t need to run a separate tool for API testing while coding. So like this, each alternative has its own benefits. Use them where it suits you.