As more of my development workflow moved into CI/CD, I started spending less time testing APIs through GUI clients and more time working from the terminal.
That made me look for a good terminal-based API testing tool that could work both locally and in automated pipelines.
Here are five tools I've tried.
- Apidog CLI
This is the one I've been using most recently.
What I like about Apidog CLI is that I can run API test scenarios from the terminal and reuse the same workflow in CI/CD.
For example:
apidog login
apidog run
It fits particularly well when API testing needs to become part of the development and deployment process rather than remaining a manual task.
- curl
It's difficult to beat curl for simple API requests.
It's available almost everywhere and is excellent for quick debugging, but more complex testing workflows usually require additional scripting.
- HTTPie
HTTPie provides a cleaner syntax than curl and is great for manually exploring APIs from the terminal.
- Hurl
Hurl takes a different approach by defining HTTP requests and expected responses in plain-text files.
That makes it interesting for repeatable API tests in CI environments.
- Newman
If your team already has Postman collections, Newman is a convenient way to execute them from the command line.
Which One Should You Use?
It really depends on your workflow.
For quick requests, curl is hard to beat.
For readable command-line requests, HTTPie is worth considering.
For file-based HTTP tests, Hurl is interesting.
If you're already invested in Postman collections, Newman makes sense.
For a more structured API testing workflow that can be reused across local development and CI/CD, Apidog CLI has been the most convenient option for me.
The important part isn't necessarily which tool you choose. It's being able to run the same API validation consistently during development and deployment.
What's your preferred terminal-based API testing tool?
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