Aman Goel | 09 Aug, 2023

Best API Testing Tools You Need to Use In 2024

 

API (Application Programming Interface) testing is software testing where the APIs are tested on the message layer, such as the SOAP web services, REST API, etc.  

APIs cannot be tested manually. Their functionality cannot be tested using the front-end, as there is no user in the interface. Hence, we need API testing tools.

API testing is particularly useful during agile development as the development cycles are short; thus, automated testing becomes the need of the hour.

What is API Testing Tools?

API is a computing interface that describes the interactions between two or more software entities. The API defines the calls and requests made from one system to another, how these calls are made, the format of data, the conventions to be followed, and more. 

APIs have become important components of software development and require thorough testing for performance, functionality, security, and reliability. 

Read also: Rest API Interview Questions

Why Use API Testing Tools?

Since all the application components are mostly loosely coupled, it is important to test the APIs. APIs reside in the business layer, which is likely to change many times. Through automated API testing tools, you can detect any format changes in request/response, or if there are any changes to the API itself, early in the testing phase. This simplifies the integration and regression testing phases, contributing to a shorter software testing life cycle. 

API testing tools also perform load testing, reusability, scalability, security testing, and functional testing. Which API tool should you choose? Read on to see our favorite picks!

Best API Testing Tools

1. TestMace

TestMace

Founded: 2018

Developer: testmace.com

Supported Platform(s): Windows, Mac, Linux

TestMace is one of the most powerful, modern, and cross-platform automated API tools that is useful for developers and testers. Developers can create complex mock scenarios and requests using authentication, variables, syntax highlighting, and autocomplete features. The UI is very simple to understand, and you can easily switch between environments. TestMace provides exhaustive documentation to support its features.

Testers can easily write test cases with the help of the tool’s graphics editor. The test cases can be tested with a single click! The tool also provides a JavaScript code editor to write complex custom scenarios.

Highlights: 

  • It supports a version control system and a well-organized project structure.
  • There are different plans – the basic plan offers free API testing tools for commercial use and comes with most of the basic features a project would need. The other plans are individual, team, and enterprise.
  • Embedded authentication methods.
  • Autocomplete variable headers, syntax highlighting, protocols.
  • Parameterized testing and debugging.
  • Support for scheduling, reporting, analysis, bug tracking, and continuous integration.

2. Tricentis

Tricentis

Founded: December 2020 (Tricentis was developed in 2007)

Developer: tricentis.com

Supported Platform(s): Windows, Mac, Linux

Tricentis encourages automated testing, a completely codeless and AI-driven intelligent approach. It is a proven tool for cloud and DevOps and greatly enhances software delivery and the quality of enterprise applications. 

Tricentis Tosca simplifies API testing by allowing testers to create API tests using a business-readable interface rapidly. It uses model-based API automation testing tools (i.e., creating an application model) to eliminate the need to write scripts. There are also productivity features like API scanning that enable users to build a test repository quickly with automatically versioned reusable assets. This makes the test cases resilient. 

Highlights:

  • Automatically identifies, manages, and eliminates test elements that trigger false positives.
  • Zero or the very low maintenance of test cases – if the requirements change, the model needs updating once, and all the other changes are automatically synchronized.
  • Easy to use for even non-programmers and non-technical persons.
  • Integrates into the DevOps and Agile Cycle.
  • Top brands like Toyota, Starbucks, Vodafone, and many more use it for API and end-to-end testing.

3. SoapUI

SoapUI

Founded: 2005

Developer: SmartBear

Supported Platform(s): Windows, Mac

SoapUI is an open-source, cross-platform API testing tool that allows testers to execute automated regression, functionality, load, security, and compliance tests. You can test all APIs, as SoapUI supports many standard protocols like SOAP/WSDL, JMS, REST, AMF, JDBC, etc. 

It has a simple UI with drag-and-drop features, which even non-technical people can easily understand. It also supports debugging and allows testers to create data-driven test scenarios. Testers can also create their custom scripts (code) for complex scenarios. SoapUI can also be integrated with many popular automation tools like Maven, Junit, Hudson, etc.

Highlights:

  • The commercial version is SoapUI Pro, and it has productivity features
  • Built entirely on Java platform; uses Swing for UI.
  • Core features include simulation, invocation, inspection, as well as functionality and security testing.
  • Great tool for vulnerability testing and provides options to protect websites from hackers. 
  • Cloning feature that duplicates existing test suites to be put into other projects.

4. Airborne

Airborne

Founded: 2016

Developer: RubyGems

Supported Platform(s): Windows

Airborne is an open-source framework to write automated tests for APIs. It tests APIs on top of Rspec and RestClient. Airborne is specifically for Ruby and provides simple response checks. 

Airborne doesn’t have great documentation; however, it is easy to write tests, so you should be well prepared once you are familiar. It has no user interface other than a text file to create code and run the tests. But it's extremely accessible for even those who haven’t written any code before. 

Highlights:

  • Airborne can perform all of the mandatory tasks the API testing tool should do – assertion, chaining, wrapping, etc.
  • It is used with RSpec, a Ruby Test framework used in Behavior Driven Development (BDD) groups. 
  • It’s a programming framework, thus easy to perform CI (Continuous Integration) and CD (Continuous Delivery) operations.
  • Free and open source.
  • Good for pair programming and extreme programming (collaborative) approaches.

API and Web Service Introduction

5. JMeter

JMeter

Founded: 1998; latest version 5.4.1 on 22-01-2021

Developer: Apache Software Foundation

Supported Platform(s): Windows, Linux, Mac (any environment that supports JVM)

JMeter is used for different types of testing, including load testing, functional testing, and unit testing.  Its primary focus is web applications, and it can also be used for basic performance monitoring. JMeter supports many protocols and servers like HTTP, HTTPS, SOAP, LDAP, FTP, etc. It is open-source and available for free. Finally, JMeter has an interactive and easy-to-use UI.

Highlights:

  • Platform independent, highly extensible.
  • Supports multithreading framework to allow concurrent sampling by different thread groups.
  • Stores test plans in XML format.
  • Lots of plugins and extensions.
  • Can be used with many programming languages like Java, PHP, etc.

6. RapidAPI

RapidAPI

Founded: 2014

Developer: RapidAPI (Iddo GinoMickey Hasalvsky)

Supported Platform(s): Windows

RapidAPI is used for testing, design, monitoring, and much more. It has a very intuitive UX and supports any API type. Developers and testers can easily create detailed functional tests for deeper API validation. It provides centralized (global) monitoring and can be integrated into CI/CD pipeline. You can also use it to test all the REST APIs, SOAP, and GraphQL APIs. 

Highlights:

  • Developers can manage all the API interactions from a single place.
  • You can sign up and try for a free account to see how the tool works.
  • Cloud-based API testing tool for comprehensive testing.
  • Users can view all the APIs connected to their accounts using the testing dashboard.

7. Postman

Postman

Founded: 2012

Developer: Abhinav Asthana

Supported Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux

Postman simplifies API testing and quickly integrates it into CI/CD pipeline, leading to faster development, testing, and monitoring. The Postman API development environment has three parts:  collections, built-in tools, and workspaces. You can run requests, debug, test, create and document mock scenarios, and monitor the collections’ API. You can share the collections, assign permissions, and collaborate using the workspace.

Highlights:

  • Basic plan is free and comes with all the necessary features for various team sizes.
  • Supports various API call types like SOAP, REST, and HTTP and supports different data formats like RAML and GraphQL.
  • Extensible and customizable through Newman, the command line collection runner
  • Huge community support.
  • Useful for developers, testers, and product managers depending on their needs and use case.

8. Apigee

Apigee

Founded: 2010

Developer: Acquired by Google in 2016

Supported Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux

Apigee is an API gateway management tool to exchange data across cloud applications and services. It fronts services with a proxy layer, thus abstracting the backend service APIs. 

Apigee has two main components. First, the Apigee services, which allow you to create, deploy, and manage API proxies. Second, the Apigee runtime, through which all the API traffic passes and is processed. The API monitoring is AI-powered, and thus, any issues can be identified in just a few clicks. 

Highlights:

  • Four plans – free version, team, business, and enterprise.  
  • Enterprise plan comprises all advanced features like Apigee Sense advanced security, traffic isolation, etc.
  • Provides governance and security policies for all the APIs.
  • Supports Node.js.
  • Developers can easily track response times, API error rates, and much more through the customizable portal.
  • One of the best tools for cross-cloud API testing.

9. ReadyAPI

ReadyAPI

Founded: Version 3.0 in 2019, version 1.0 was released in 2014

Developer: SmartBear

Supported Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux

Through ReadyAPI, you can test the functionality, load, and security of SOAP, RESTful, GraphQL, and many more web services quickly inside the CI/CD pipeline. It has a centralized interface and helps accelerate API quality for DevOps and Agile teams. Teams can create data-driven tests and add security scans easily with just a few clicks. ReadyAPI also offers virtualization of SOAP, RESTful, TCP, etc., and web services to remove testing pipeline dependencies. 

Highlights:

  • Interactive dashboard that quickly provides insights and metrics.
  • Detailed reporting and analytics in various formats like HTML, CSV, etc.
  • You can create synthetic data or import data from various data sources and share it. Data for different types of tests like load, functional, security, etc., to check boundary conditions with realistic data.
  • It is essentially a paid version of SoapUI developed by SmartBear – it has all the features of SoapUI and more.

10. REST-assured

REST-assured

Founded: First release (1.0) in December 2010

Developer: Johan Haleby

Supported Platform(s): Windows, macOS, Linux

REST-Assured is a Java-based DSL through which you can write readable and powerful tests for RESTful APIs, but not OAP APIs. It is a Java library, so integrating with Junit, TestNG, or other Java frameworks is easy, and integrating to CI/CD is also very fast. The code is in human-readable form (like English) as it supports Given-when-then notation similar to if-else. 

Highlights:

  • Supports data-driven testing and authentication mechanisms like basic username-password authentication and OAuth authentication. 
  • Provides support for all HTTP methods without the need to write the boilerplate code for setting up HTTP connection, sending requests, and parsing the response.
  • Open-source. 
  • Offers many other features like XPath validation, specification reuse, easy file uploads, etc.
  • Works best for JSON response type.

 

Bonus: Katalon Studio

katalon

As a bonus, Katalon Studio is worth mentioning in our list. Katalon LLC developed a dual interchangeable interface to create test cases, like script view and manual view. This means both technical and non-technical persons can use it.

 It follows the Page Object Model pattern, wherein an object repository is created for web UI elements captured using a recorder app. 

Katalon Studio has three versions: free, enterprise, and runtime engine so that teams can customize based on their budget and operational needs. 

Conclusion

All the above API testing tools are good in their own ways, and we cannot say one is better than the other. The API tester you choose depends on your business case and the features that your project requires. 

Now that you have an idea about some of the best API testing tools, it’s time to upgrade your software knowledge! Explore Top 10 Software Testing Courses.

 

 
By Aman Goel

Entrepreneur, Coder, Speed-cuber, Blogger, fan of Air crash investigation! Aman Goel is a Computer Science Graduate from IIT Bombay. Fascinated by the world of technology he went on to build his own start-up - AllinCall Research and Solutions to build the next generation of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing based solutions to power businesses.

View all post by the author

Subscribe to our Newsletter for Articles, News, & Jobs.

I accept the Terms and Conditions.

Disclosure: Hackr.io is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

In this article

Learn More

Please login to leave comments