Postman is a platform for working with APIs. Abhinav Asthana started it in 2012 as a side project, a Chrome extension for sending HTTP requests. The company, Postman Inc, was founded in 2014 in Bangalore, India, and is now headquartered in San Francisco.
Developers use Postman to send requests to an API and inspect the response, without writing code. Requests are saved in collections that can be shared with a team. Postman supports REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket and other protocols. Tests written in JavaScript check responses automatically, and collections can run in CI pipelines through the Postman CLI. Mock servers, monitors and generated documentation help teams design an API before it is built and watch it after release.
Postman has a free plan for individuals and small teams. Paid plans add more collaboration, admin controls, larger usage limits and enterprise security. It runs as a desktop app for Windows, Mac and Linux, and in the browser. The Postman API Network lists public APIs from many companies. It is one of the most used API tools among backend developers, testers and integration teams.