SuperTest vs REST Assured

Free and open source

Free and open source

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

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

Everything, self-hosted

Everything, self-hosted

Widely used

OSS community · since 2014

Widely used

OSS community · since 2010

• Fast: no network, no separate server process, no port conflicts in CI.
• Tiny API you can learn in ten minutes.
• Works with whichever runner you already use.

• API tests live in the codebase, versioned and reviewed with the service.
• Readable given/when/then chains that map directly onto HTTP semantics.
• Full access to Java for setup, data and assertions.

• Node.js only, and only for services you host yourself.
• In-process testing skips the real network stack, proxies and load balancer.
• No environment management or collection concept for cross-service flows.

• Java only, and requires developers rather than manual testers.
• No GUI, so exploratory request work needs a separate client.
• Verbose for very large payload assertions.

Node.js API projects testing their own routes in the unit/integration layer.

JVM teams that want API tests in the same repository as the service.