REST Assured vs SoapUI / ReadyAPI

Free and open source

Free tier available

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

SmartBear publishes no ReadyAPI price; the pricing page is a quote request. ReadyAPI is licensed per module — Test, Performance, Virtualization — and buying all three multiplies the cost, with floating licences for CI costing more than fixed seats.

Everything, self-hosted

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

Widely used

OSS community · since 2010

Widely used

SmartBear · since 2005

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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