SoapUI / ReadyAPI vs Step CI

From $829 per year (indicative, ReadyAPI Test module)

Free and open source

ReadyAPI is licensed per module — Test, Performance, Virtualization — and buying all three multiplies the cost.

Free and open source. You pay in engineering time and CI minutes.

SoapUI open source is free and covers SOAP and REST functional testing.

Everything, self-hosted

Widely used

SmartBear · since 2005

Emerging

Step CI · since 2022

• Unmatched SOAP, WSDL and JMS support for legacy enterprise integration work.
• ReadyAPI bundles functional, security, load and virtualisation in one product family.
• Groovy scripting escape hatch for anything the GUI cannot express.

• YAML workflows are easy to review in a pull request and need no runtime knowledge.
• Generates a starting suite from an OpenAPI spec.
• Includes basic load-testing capability in the same file format.

• Dated Java desktop UI that feels heavy next to modern clients.
• Project files are XML and merge badly in version control.
• Modular licensing gets expensive fast.

• YAML hits a ceiling on complex conditional logic.
• Small project with limited community support.
• Ecosystem and reporting are thin compared to established tools.

Enterprises testing SOAP services, message queues and legacy integration layers.

Small teams wanting declarative, repo-versioned API checks in CI.