Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

OpenAPI Generator VS Swagger UI

Compare OpenAPI Generator VS Swagger UI and see what are their differences

OpenAPI Generator logo OpenAPI Generator

OpenAPI Generator enables you to generate documentation, clients, and servers from OpenAPI 2.0/3.x documents without hassle.

Swagger UI logo Swagger UI

Swagger UI is a dependency-free collection of HTML, Javascript, and CSS assets that dynamically generate beautiful documentation from a Swag
  • OpenAPI Generator Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-01
  • Swagger UI Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-17

OpenAPI Generator features and specs

  • Wide Language Support
    OpenAPI Generator supports a broad range of programming languages, which allows developers to generate client libraries, server stubs, API documentation, and other code artifacts across various languages with ease.
  • Customizability
    The tool provides diverse customization options, including custom templates, configuration options, and overrides, enabling developers to tailor the generated code to meet specific project requirements.
  • Active Community
    OpenAPI Generator benefits from an active and engaged community that contributes to continuous improvements, bug fixes, and enhancements, ensuring the tool stays updated with evolving needs and standards.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    It comes with extensive documentation and a rich set of resources that help users understand how to leverage the tool effectively for their projects.
  • Time-Efficiency
    Automating the generation of API-related code significantly reduces development time and effort, allowing teams to focus on implementing business logic rather than boilerplate code.

Possible disadvantages of OpenAPI Generator

  • Complexity
    Although powerful, OpenAPI Generator can be complex to configure and use effectively, especially for newcomers unfamiliar with OpenAPI specifications and generation nuances.
  • Generated Code Quality
    While the tool generates a significant amount of code, the quality of the generated code might not always match hand-crafted solutions, potentially requiring manual refinements and adjustments.
  • Heavy Dependency
    Relying on a code generator creates a dependency on the tool, which may complicate upgrades over time, especially if custom templates or configurations are heavily used.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a learning curve associated with understanding the OpenAPI specification and how to effectively use the generator, particularly for complex APIs and integrations.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Keeping up with new releases and ensuring compatibility with updated OpenAPI standards can introduce additional maintenance overhead for teams using the tool extensively.

Swagger UI features and specs

  • Interactive API Documentation
    Swagger UI provides a user-friendly interface where developers can interact with an API directly from the documentation, making it easier to understand and use.
  • Automated Documentation Generation
    Swagger UI can automatically generate API documentation from an OpenAPI Specification, reducing the time and effort required to write and maintain documentation manually.
  • Standardization
    It adheres to the OpenAPI Specification, a widely-accepted standard for defining APIs, which promotes consistency and interoperability across different tools and platforms.
  • Comprehensive Testing
    Developers can use the Swagger UI to test endpoints directly, allowing for quicker identification and resolution of issues during development.
  • Customization
    The UI can be customized to fit the specific needs and branding of a project, offering flexibility in how the API documentation is presented.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Swagger UI is part of a larger Swagger suite of tools, supported by a large community and numerous plugins, enhancing its capabilities and integration options.

Possible disadvantages of Swagger UI

  • Learning Curve
    New users may find Swagger UI complex and might require some time to get familiar with the OpenAPI Specification and the tool’s features.
  • Performance
    For very large APIs with numerous endpoints and complex schemas, Swagger UI can experience performance slowdowns, affecting usability.
  • Initial Setup
    Setting up Swagger UI and configuring the OpenAPI Specification can be time-consuming and requires accuracy to ensure the documentation is correctly generated.
  • Dependency on OpenAPI Specification
    The effectiveness of Swagger UI is highly dependent on the accuracy and completeness of the OpenAPI Specification. Poorly defined specifications can lead to incomplete or incorrect documentation.
  • Security Concerns
    Exposing APIs in an interactive documentation tool can raise security concerns, particularly if sensitive functions are publicly accessible without proper authentication and authorization controls.

OpenAPI Generator videos

Introducing OpenAPI Generator

More videos:

  • Review - Scaling the Test Coverage of OpenAPI Generator for 30+ Programming Languages - William Cheng

Swagger UI videos

No Swagger UI videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to OpenAPI Generator and Swagger UI)
Development
100 100%
0% 0
API Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Tool
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using OpenAPI Generator and Swagger UI. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare OpenAPI Generator and Swagger UI

OpenAPI Generator Reviews

We have no reviews of OpenAPI Generator yet.
Be the first one to post

Swagger UI Reviews

Top 20 Open Source & Cloud Free Postman Alternatives (2024 Updated)
Swagger UI is part of the Swagger ecosystem, providing tools for API design and documentation. It allows developers to visualize and interact with APIs effortlessly.
Source: medium.com
Postman Alternatives for API Testing and Monitoring
Swagger UI is a commonly used interactive visualization tool for RESTful web services, used for documenting, designing, and testing APIs. Swagger UI reads the OpenAPI specification document and generates an interactive documentation website. This web-based UI allows users to visualize and interact with the API’s resources without having any of the implementation logic in...
15 Best Postman Alternatives for Automated API Testing [2022 Updated]
One of the most appealing features is that Swagger UI is entirely customizable. You can freely modify your tool to meet your needs with complete access to the source code. Swagger UI makes an existing JSON or YAML document interactive. It creates a platform that organizes and categorizes our methods (get, put, post, delete).
Source: testsigma.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Swagger UI might be a bit more popular than OpenAPI Generator. We know about 49 links to it since March 2021 and only 42 links to OpenAPI Generator. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

OpenAPI Generator mentions (42)

  • Using OpenAPI to Automate API Integration With Rapyd's Payment Gateway
    Manually writing API clients can be time-consuming and result in errors. This is where the OpenAPI specification and tools like OpenAPI Generator are helpful. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Define, Generate, and Implement: An API-First Approach with OpenAPI Generator and FlightPHP
    With your API defined, use the OpenAPI Generator to generate your code automatically. The PHP Flight generator — documented here — was provided by the author and, although its status is still marked as "experimental", it has been my production workhorse for over a year. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • Next-generation web framework Teo, supports Node.js, Python and Rust
    You would use OpenAPI (formerly Swagger) [1] for that, which includes JSONSchema for data types but also adds specs for defining REST apis. There are plenty of generators and other tools that work with OpenAPI [2] [1] https://www.openapis.org/ [2] https://openapi-generator.tech/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • FastAPI Got Me an OpenAPI Spec Really... Fast
    As a result, the following specification can be used to generate clients in a number of different languages via OpenAPI Generator. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • How to Automatically Consume RESTful APIs in Your Frontend
    As an alternative, you can also use the official OpenAPI Generator, which is a more generic tool supporting a wide range of languages and frameworks. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

Swagger UI mentions (49)

  • Common Mistakes in RESTful API Design
    The OpenAPI Specification (formerly Swagger) has become the industry standard for documenting RESTful APIs. Tools like Swagger UI and ReDoc can generate interactive documentation from OpenAPI definitions, reducing the effort to maintain quality documentation. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Leveraging API Documentation for Faster Developer Onboarding
    Reference generators like Swagger UI Automatically create API references from OpenAPI specifications, keeping documentation in sync with the actual API. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • How to Build a Task Manager API with Django REST Framework: Part 7 - API Documentation with OpenAPI and Swagger
    We’ll use OpenAPI (a standard for API specifications) and Swagger UI (a tool to visualize and interact with the API) to generate our documentation. The drf-spectacular library will help us create an OpenAPI schema for our DRF API and integrate Swagger UI seamlessly. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to get RCE with LaTeX via file upload
    Who has never analyzed a website and ended up causing an error and discovered that the server was in debug mode and therefore revealing environment variables (like other URLs, database connection strings and even credentials) and routes to API endpoints and their respective Swagger UI documentation? Cool, and who has ever come across something called "LaTeX Compiler API 1.0" among those endpoints? - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • The Good, the Bad, and the OpenAPI: Why Developers Love and Hate It
    Poor UI/UX – OpenAPI-generated documentation tools like Swagger UI are functional but often lack an intuitive experience. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing OpenAPI Generator and Swagger UI, you can also consider the following products

swagger.io - Swagger is an open source RESTapi Documentation Tool.

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

API Transformer - API Transformer is a powerful solution that enables you to Transform API specifications to any format.

Swagger Codegen - Swagger Codegen can reduce the complexities that arise in your build process by providing client SDKs and server stubs for any API you want.

Insomnia REST - Design, debug, test, and mock APIs locally, on Git, or cloud. Build better APIs collaboratively for the most popular protocols with a dev‑friendly UI, built-in automation, and an extensible plugin ecosystem.

AutoRestCodeGenerator - AutoRestCodeGenerator is an open-source OpenAPI (f.k.a Swagger) Specification code generator released under the MIT License that supports Python, C#, TypeScript, PowerShell, Go, Node.js, and Java.