What does Postman do?

Postman is a suite of tools that helps developers build, test, and use internal and external API endpoints.

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Last updated: July 4, 2025

The TL;DR

Postman is a suite of tools that helps developers build, test, and use API endpoints.

The whole world is pretty much made up of APIs, and tons of developer hours are spent working with them
The default way of working with APIs is via the terminal in cURL, or client libraries in your favorite programming languages
Postman gives developers a nice UI for working with APIs: making requests, authenticating, testing, and even permissions

At the time of writing, there are more than 20M developers on the platform (at least according to their site), so it’s pretty popular!

Terms Mentioned

Companies Mentioned

The core Postman product: working with APIs

Postman is an “API platform” – admittedly not a very useful or specific description – with many different products that can help you design, build, test, and iterate on your APIs. You can think of it as a development environment for APIs.

The main thing they’re known for is their API client – a nice tool for developers to work with APIs, debug why they’re not working, and save their common requests.

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It’s an API-First world

Pretty much everything in software is just a bunch of APIs – so understanding Postman means understanding what those APIs are, what they do, and most importantly, how developers work with them.

What does Postman do?

The TL;DR

Terms Mentioned

HTTP

UI

Frontend

JavaScript

Client

Schema

Infrastructure

API

Terminal

Deploy

Authentication

Public API

Database

Query

Companies Mentioned

AWS

Postman

Zapier

The core Postman product: working with APIs

It’s an API-First world

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