1.16The Hybrid Approach

Many teams use both tools effectively:

• Postman + Newman for smoke tests and quick endpoint checks
• pytest for comprehensive test suites with complex logic, data setup, and teardown

Start with Postman to explore and understand the API, then transition critical tests to pytest for long-term maintainability.

2.4 Running Tests in CI

# Run all API tests
API_BASE_URL=https://api.staging.example.com pytest tests/api/ -v \
    --junitxml=results.xml

# Run only smoke tests
API_BASE_URL=https://api.staging.example.com pytest tests/api/ -m smoke -v

# Run with parallel execution (requires pytest-xdist)
API_BASE_URL=https://api.staging.example.com pytest tests/api/ -n 4 -v

# Run against production (read-only tests only)
API_BASE_URL=https://api.example.com pytest tests/api/ -m "readonly" -v