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Fiddler vs Postman: What are the differences?
Fiddler and Postman are two widely used tools in the realm of API testing and development. Let's delve into the key distinctions between these two tools.
Installation Process: Fiddler necessitates a standalone installation, deploying its own application that needs to be installed on the user's machine. It provides a comprehensive set of features, including traffic capturing and analysis. Postman, on the other hand, is a cloud-based platform with an additional option for a desktop application. Users can access Postman through their web browser or install the desktop version based on their preferences.
User Interface and Workflow: Fiddler offers a desktop application with a robust and feature-rich user interface, catering to advanced users who require in-depth traffic monitoring and analysis capabilities. Postman provides a user-friendly interface with a focus on simplifying the API testing and development workflow. Its clean and intuitive design appeals to both beginners and experienced developers.
Request Building and Customization: Fiddler allows users to manually construct HTTP requests and inspect responses. It offers advanced customization options, making it suitable for intricate scenarios and detailed request/response analysis. Postman, while also supporting manual request building, excels in providing a visual and intuitive way to create and customize requests through its user-friendly interface, making it accessible for users with varying technical backgrounds.
Collaboration and Sharing: Fiddler primarily operates on a local machine, limiting collaborative features. Sharing captured traffic or analysis typically requires exporting and sharing files. Postman, being a cloud-based platform, facilitates collaboration by allowing users to share and collaborate on API collections. It provides features for team collaboration, making it easy to work on API development projects collectively.
Automation and Scripting: Fiddler supports scripting and automation through the FiddlerScript language, allowing users to create custom rules and automate certain tasks. Postman offers a powerful scripting environment using JavaScript, enabling users to automate API tests, set up pre-request scripts, and define complex workflows within the tool.
Integration and Ecosystem: Fiddler integrates with various third-party tools and extensions, enhancing its functionality based on user needs. It provides a versatile ecosystem for extending capabilities. Postman boasts an extensive ecosystem with support for a wide range of integrations, including CI/CD pipelines, version control, and collaboration platforms, providing a seamless development experience.
In summary, Fiddler empowers you to dissect and manipulate API traffic, while Postman helps you design, test, and document APIs efficiently.
From a StackShare Community member: "I just started working for a start-up and we are in desperate need of better documentation for our API. Currently our API docs is in a README.md file. We are evaluating Postman and Swagger UI. Since there are many options and I was wondering what other StackSharers would recommend?"
I use Postman because of the ease of team-management, using workspaces and teams, runner, collections, environment variables, test-scripts (post execution), variable management (pre and post execution), folders (inside collections, for better management of APIs), newman, easy-ci-integration (and probably a few more things that I am not able to recall right now).
I use Swagger UI because it's an easy tool for end-consumers to visualize and test our APIs. It focuses on that ! And it's directly embedded and delivered with the APIs. Postman's built-in tools aren't bad, but their main focus isn't the documentation and also, they are hosted outside the project.
I recommend Postman because it's easy to use with history option. Also, it has very great features like runner, collections, test scripts runners, defining environment variables and simple exporting and importing data.
Postman supports automation and organization in a way that Insomnia just doesn't. Admittedly, Insomnia makes it slightly easy to query the data that you get back (in a very MongoDB-esque query language) but Postman sets you up to develop the code that you would use in development/testing right in the editor.
Pros of Fiddler
Pros of Postman
- Easy to use490
- Great tool369
- Makes developing rest api's easy peasy276
- Easy setup, looks good156
- The best api workflow out there144
- It's the best53
- History feature53
- Adds real value to my workflow44
- Great interface that magically predicts your needs43
- The best in class app35
- Can save and share script12
- Fully featured without looking cluttered10
- Collections8
- Option to run scrips8
- Global/Environment Variables8
- Shareable Collections7
- Dead simple and useful. Excellent7
- Dark theme easy on the eyes7
- Awesome customer support6
- Great integration with newman6
- Documentation5
- Simple5
- The test script is useful5
- Saves responses4
- This has simplified my testing significantly4
- Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,34
- Easy as pie4
- API-network3
- I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis3
- Mocking API calls with predefined response3
- Now supports GraphQL2
- Postman Runner CI Integration2
- Easy to setup, test and provides test storage2
- Continuous integration using newman2
- Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable2
- Runner2
- Graph2
- <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>1
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Cons of Fiddler
Cons of Postman
- Stores credentials in HTTP10
- Bloated features and UI9
- Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens8
- Poor GraphQL support7
- Expensive5
- Not free after 5 users3
- Can't prompt for per-request variables3
- Import swagger1
- Support websocket1
- Import curl1
