Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Postman VS Karate

Compare Postman VS Karate and see what are their differences

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Postman logo Postman

The Collaboration Platform for API Development

Karate logo Karate

Web-services testing made simple 🥋
  • Postman Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-23
  • Karate Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-11-01

Postman features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Postman features an intuitive and user-friendly interface that simplifies the process of constructing API requests and visualizing responses. This makes it accessible for both beginners and advanced users.
  • Collaboration
    Postman offers robust collaboration features, such as shared workspaces, collections, and real-time editing, enabling teams to work together more efficiently on API development.
  • Comprehensive Testing Tools
    Postman provides a suite of testing tools to create, automate, and manage test cases. It supports automated testing through its scripting environments, which ensure APIs perform as expected.
  • Extensive API Documentation
    Postman can automatically generate comprehensive API documentation, making it easier to maintain and share API specifications with stakeholders and other developers.
  • Mock Servers
    Postman allows users to create mock servers to simulate API responses. This is particularly useful for testing and development purposes when the actual API is not yet available.
  • Integration Capabilities
    Postman offers integrations with various CI/CD tools, version control systems, and other services like Jenkins, GitHub, and Slack, facilitating seamless integration into development workflows.

Possible disadvantages of Postman

  • Resource Intensive
    Postman can sometimes be resource-intensive, consuming substantial memory and CPU, which can impact the performance of your system, especially when dealing with large collections.
  • Steep Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While Postman is generally user-friendly, some of its advanced features, like scripting and automation, can have a steep learning curve and might require additional effort to master.
  • Pricing
    Although Postman offers a free tier, many of its advanced features, such as enhanced collaboration tools and extended integrations, are locked behind paid plans, which may not be cost-effective for smaller teams or individual developers.
  • Dependency on Internet
    Some of Postman's features, particularly those related to collaboration and synchronization, require a stable internet connection, which can be a limitation in environments with poor connectivity.
  • Limited Native Support for Certain Protocols
    Postman primarily focuses on HTTP/HTTPS protocols and may offer limited or no native support for other protocols, which can be restricting for developers working with diverse sets of technologies.

Karate features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Karate is designed to be user-friendly with a simple syntax, making it easy for testers with minimal programming knowledge to write and execute tests efficiently.
  • Integration of API and UI Testing
    Karate offers the ability to perform both API and UI testing within the same framework, providing a unified approach to comprehensive application testing.
  • Built-in Assertions
    Karate has powerful built-in assertions, which allow testers to easily verify API responses and integrate validations without requiring additional libraries.
  • Support for Data-Driven Testing
    Karate supports data-driven testing, enabling testers to execute test cases with varying data sets easily, enhancing coverage and testing efficiency.
  • Parallel Execution
    The framework supports parallel test execution out of the box, which enhances performance by reducing the time taken to run large test suites.

Possible disadvantages of Karate

  • Limited Customization
    While Karate is user-friendly, its syntax and structure can be restrictive when trying to implement complex custom logic or intricate test scenarios.
  • Java Dependency
    Karate is built on Java, which means users must have a Java environment set up, potentially adding complexity for teams not familiar with Java.
  • UI Testing Limitations
    Although Karate supports UI testing, it's not as feature-rich or robust as specialized UI testing frameworks like Selenium.
  • Learning Curve
    There's a learning curve for new users due to its unique syntax and approach, which might be challenging for individuals used to other testing frameworks.
  • Community and Ecosystem
    Karate has a smaller community compared to other established frameworks, which may limit the availability of plugins, extensions, and community support resources.

Analysis of Postman

Overall verdict

  • Yes, Postman is widely regarded as a good tool for API development and testing. Its combination of powerful features and ease of use makes it a popular choice among developers.

Why this product is good

  • Postman is considered a top choice for API development due to its user-friendly interface, extensive features for testing, automation, and collaboration, and strong community support. It simplifies the process of creating, managing, and testing APIs, making it accessible for both beginners and experienced developers.

Recommended for

  • Developers working on API integration
  • QA engineers involved in testing APIs
  • Teams in need of collaborative API development
  • Developers looking to automate API testing
  • Individuals looking for a comprehensive API testing tool

Postman videos

POST/CON 2018 workshop in review: Running Postman Collections

More videos:

  • Review - POST/CON 2018 workshop in review: Postman Collections
  • Tutorial - How to Share Postman Collections

Karate videos

Karate Kid movie review 2010

More videos:

  • Review - Next Karate Kid - Nostalgia Critic

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Postman and Karate)
API Tools
99 99%
1% 1
Website Testing
0 0%
100% 100
APIs
100 100%
0% 0
Browser Testing
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Postman and Karate

Postman Reviews

Top 20 Open Source & Cloud Free Postman Alternatives (2024 Updated)
As the digital landscape evolves, the significance of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) has surged, facilitating seamless communication between various software applications. Postman has been a leading tool in this space, offering a comprehensive platform for API development, testing, and documentation. However, recent shifts in its pricing model and user experience...
Source: medium.com
Best Postman Alternatives To Consider in 2025
- Focus on specific needs: Does the tool excel at SOAP APIs or cater to microservices? - Resource usage: Does it handle complex projects without impacting system performance? - Script reusability: Does it allow for efficient code sharing across projects?3. Is Postman the best API tool?Not all-encompassing. While Postman is powerful, the "best" tool depends on your specific...
Postman Alternatives for API Testing and Monitoring
Some engineers turn to Postman for API testing and monitoring needs. However, Postman is a costly and limited solution. QA, DevOps and other engineers may find it lacks capabilities that can answer their needs. In this blog post, we provide 12 Postman alternatives built for the enterprise.
Beeceptor vs Postman
You cannot download request log. Although, you can use Postman APIs to query and retrieve.
Source: beeceptor.com
Top 15 MuleSoft Competitors and Alternatives
Postman is an API platform with the world’s largest public API hub that helps developers design, build, test, and iterate APIs. In 2022, Postman served over 20 million developers and 500,000 organizations.

Karate Reviews

Postman Alternatives for API Testing and Monitoring
Karate Labs is a tool known for its versatility in test automation, particularly for APIs, web services, and UI testing. It stands out for its simplicity in writing tests, even for non-programmers, due to its Gherkin-based DSL. For API testing, Karate Labs allows users to test both SOAP and REST APIs. It can send requests, receive responses, and validate the response data.
15 BEST SoapUI Alternatives (2022 Update)
Karate is a new API testing framework base on cucumber library. Karate DSL allows testers to write meaningful tests for web service using a domain-specific language.
Source: www.guru99.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Postman should be more popular than Karate. It has been mentiond 30 times since March 2021. 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.

Postman mentions (30)

  • Best API Mocking Platforms in 2024
    Postman (postman.com) is a comprehensive API platform that goes beyond mocking, offering a full suite for API development, testing, and monitoring. With its mock server feature, Postman enables teams to simulate responses for various endpoints, making it a popular choice for end-to-end API management. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • 10 Best API Mocking Tools (2024 Review)
    Postman is a widely used tool for API testing and interaction. Its "Mock Servers" feature lets you create a mock version of your API, returning specific responses for testing. While useful, Postman may lack advanced mock server management features compared to other tools. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
  • The 3 Best Tools for API Design for Software Architects
    Postman is a widely adopted tool for API design and development, offering an intuitive interface for creating, testing, and documenting APIs. It simplifies the API design process, allowing architects to quickly prototype and refine their designs. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • How to use ApyHub to Build a Serverless Function in NodeJs?
    Once deployed, thoroughly test your serverless function to confirm it behaves as expected. Invoke the function manually from the cloud platform’s console or use tools like Postman, Apidog, or Fusion ( Fusion is ApyHub’s own API Client ) to test HTTP-triggered functions. Ensure the function executes correctly and handles errors gracefully. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Mastering Microservices: A Hands-On Tutorial with Node.js, RabbitMQ, Nginx, and Docker
    To test the API endpoints, you can use Postman. Download and install Postman from Postman's official website. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
View more

Karate mentions (11)

  • Level up your Karate Testing with Spring Boot DI
    For a few years I've used Cucumber for higher level testing, and only more recently started using Karate. While Cucumber is a great tool, I think Karate really shines in reducing the boilerplate that comes along with step definitions and making it easy to write meaningful tests quickly, especially when it comes to API testing. - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • Cucumber Maintainer out of Job and future of the project is uncertain
    This is why we need better tools which will give benefits for the added complexity. If you need to create both the feature files AND the code, it's just complexity with little benefits. But frameworks like https://github.com/karatelabs/karate are hiding this complexity and remove the code layer entirely. Which, in my view, this is where you need to be in 2023, particularly for API testing. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Lama2: Plain-Text Powered REST API Client for Teams
    Congrats on the launch ! I'm the lead dev of [Karate](https://github.com/karatelabs/karate) and the IDE and traditional solutions fall short. I hope Karate's syntax passes your "memory friendly" test :) We get regular feedback is that it is easy to read and even non-programmers can pick it up. One thing I feel we do really well is chaining of HTTP requests. And we have plugins for... - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Hurl, run and test HTTP requests with plain text
    I recently found a BDD style tool that has native HTTP comprehension, which seems like it hits a similar area in the testing concept space: https://github.com/karatelabs/karate. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
  • Hurl 1.8.0, text based integration tests for REST APIs and web sites
    I'm doing something similar but taking the approach of karate framework making it a kitchen sink of e2e testing tools. Love to see another rust based solution! I might open source mine at some point, I've implemented curl + webdriver, I will expand to support other things in my stack like desktop automation. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Postman and Karate, you can also consider the following products

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.

Robot framework - Robot Framework is a generic test automation framework for acceptance testing and acceptance...

MuleSoft Anypoint Platform - Anypoint Platform is a unified, highly productive, hybrid integration platform that creates an application network of apps, data and devices with API-led connectivity.

DreamFactory - DreamFactory is an API management platform used to generate, secure, document, and extend APIs.

Katalon - Built on the top of Selenium and Appium, Katalon Studio is a free and powerful automated testing tool for web testing, mobile testing, and API testing.

RapidAPI for Mac - Paw is a REST client for Mac.