11 Best API Testing Tools

Application programming interface(API) is a collection of software functions and procedures through which other software applications can be accessed or executed. In case of API testing, you use software to send calls to API, get output and log system’s response. As shorter development cycles put more pressure on automated testing, API testing becomes more important for agile development. So here we’ll see the top 15 API testing tools that you can use in 2021. But before digging to it, let us see what is API testing is software and need of API testing.

What Is API Testing In Software Testing?

Testing API becomes an important part of complete software testing. It creates a second layer of testing and requires nearly 20% of testing efforts. As there is no GUI, API testing is done at a message level. It includes testing soap web services, REST API’s. Due to the API testing characteristics, it cannot be manually done, and so there comes the need of API testing tools for automated API testing. Various kinds of testing is done during API testing such as- functionality testing, security testing, reliability testing, load testing, API documentation testing and proficiency testing.

Need Of API Testing-

• Core functionalities of API can be validated
• Consumes less time than that of GUI functioning testing
• Test data is mostly derived as JSON or XML. So the process, not language dependent
• Analysing app at API level would be catastrophic so it is better to do it at first

Top 11 API Testing Tools-

1. Katalon Studio-

It is a free test automation tool which is compatible with API, Web and Mobile apps, and is rapidly increasing its scope as a best tool for API API/Web services testing by being the comprehensive solution developers and testers need. This tools supports SOAP and REST requests, range of commands and parameterization functionalities they need. Also it has the  ability to combine UI and API/Web services to function in various environments like macOS, Linux, Windows and this is a unique feature among best API tools. 

Features-

• It can be used for both exploratory testing and automated testing
• Supports CI/CD integration and AssertJ by allowing for a fluent assertion with BDD style.
• Covers API, WebUI and mobile testing and their features
• Supports data centric approach
• It also supports SOAP and REST both
• Can accessible to non-tech savvy people and also professionals with both Manual and Groovy Scripting modes

2. Soap UI-

It is a popular API testing tool for functional testing that allows automation testing of SOAP, REST APIs, and web services. SOAP UI has a free version and a pro version, where pro version offers more features than free version. Here are some of the features of SOAP UI- 

Features-

• Seamless integration- Integrates with 13 API management platforms, supports REST, SOAP, JMS and IoT
• Powerful data-driven testing- Load data from Excel, files and databases to simulate the way users interact with your APIs.
• Essay test creation- Point-and-click, drag and drop,functionality make complicated tasks easy
• Script reusability- Reuse functional test cases as load tests and security scans in few clicks.

3. Apigee-

It offers benefit of allowing users to access its features by using other editors. Users can test performance and build API using other editors like Swagger while using the Apigee tool.

Features-

• Allows easy creation of proxies from Open API Specification
• It can track API traffic, response times, as well as error rates
• Identifies performance issues
• Useful for digital business and data-rich mobile driven APIs
• Supports cloud, on-premise, or hybrid deployment model

4. Parasoft SOAtest-

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