Postman Learning Center
Postman's official documentation: sending requests, collections, variables and environments, writing test scripts, the Collection Runner, the Postman CLI for CI, mock servers and monitors. It is the reference to keep open while you build API test collections, and it explains how to move from manual requests to automated runs.
Guide
Web Development
Postman
Beginner
Free
What it is
The Postman Learning Center is the official documentation for Postman, the API platform many teams use to explore, document and test APIs. It covers the app from first request to automated runs in CI.
What it covers
- Sending requests: methods, parameters, headers, bodies, authentication and reading responses.
- Collections: organising requests into folders, sharing them and documenting them.
- Variables and environments: variable scopes, environments for local, staging and other targets, and handling secrets.
- Scripts and tests: pre-request and post-response scripts in JavaScript, the pm object, assertions with pm.test and pm.expect, and chaining values between requests.
- Running collections: the Collection Runner with data files for data-driven runs.
- Postman CLI: Postman's command-line tool for running collections in CI and other automation.
- Mock servers and monitors: serving example responses and running collections on a schedule.
Is it worth your time?
If you test APIs with Postman, yes. The scripting and variables pages in particular answer most questions testers have when moving from sending requests by hand to real automated checks, and they are more current than most tutorials. As of 2026-09 the documentation notes that Newman, the older open source command-line runner, does not support the collection format used by Postman v12 and later, and points users to the Postman CLI; that kind of detail is easy to miss elsewhere.
Prerequisites
Basic understanding of HTTP requests, status codes and JSON. For scripts, basic JavaScript: variables, objects, arrays and functions.
Free or paid?
The documentation is free. Postman itself has a free plan that is enough for learning and personal projects; paid plans add team collaboration and higher usage limits. Check the official pricing page for current plans.
What you can do after
Build a structured collection with environments, write scripted tests on every request, chain requests through a full flow, run data-driven collections and run your suite from the command line in CI.
Common questions
Newman or the Postman CLI? For collections in the current format, the documentation recommends the Postman CLI. Newman is still available as open source and is used in many existing pipelines.
Where should secrets live? In environment variables marked as secret or local values, never in collection files you export into a shared repository.
Ready to start?
Opens on Postman in a new tab.
Stuck on something specific?
Writing only gets you so far. If you want an answer to your situation rather than the general case, book a session and we will work through it together. Sessions are free for approved Sefism members, and a few slots open each week.
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