Postman Monitors frequently asked questions

Following are frequently asked questions about configuring, running, updating, securing, and troubleshooting Postman Monitors.

Monitor settings

What can I test with monitors?

You can write post-response scripts for monitors to check for proper behavior, business logic, and error handling.

How many monitors can I create?

There is no limit to the number of monitors you can create. You can have any number of collections, each with any number of monitors, and each monitor can run on a different schedule.

How many regions can my monitor run in?

With paid plans, you can select one or more geographic regions to run your monitor in, or have Postman automatically select a region for you. If you are on a free plan, Postman always selects a region for you. To turn on manual region selection, upgrade your Postman plan.

If you're interested in a region that's not available when creating a monitor, contact the Postman support team.

What time zone is my monitor set to?

Your monitor's time zone is automatically set to the time zone of your computer when you create the monitor.

Monitor runs

How long can a monitor run?

Monitors are limited to a maximum of 10 minutes (Postman Free plans) or 15 minutes (Postman paid plans) for each run. All HTTP requests, responses, pre-request scripts, and post-response scripts must complete within the time limit or the monitor will time out.

How do I persist variables between monitor runs?

You can't import existing global variables into a monitor, but you can create new global variables during a run. Global and environment variables can be updated and subsequently used during a monitoring run, however they'll revert to their original values. You can change this behavior and persist variable values by using the Postman API to update your environment each time your monitor runs.

How many HTTP requests can a monitor send?

For monitors, there is no limit to the number of requests, but the total runtime can't exceed 10 minutes (Postman Free plans) or 15 minutes (Postman paid plans).

Can I run a request multiple times?

Monitors only run one iteration by default, but you can use setNextRequest() to run multiple iterations.

Data handling

How much data can a monitor send or receive?

There is no specific limit to the amount of data that can be sent or received per request. However, large requests or responses take longer to send and receive. Make sure that all requests can be completed within the time limit of 10 minutes (Postman Free plans) or 15 minutes (Postman paid plans).

Can I upload data files or attach files to a monitor?

You can upload a data file with sets of values to use as variable inputs when running the monitor, similar to the collection runner. Data files are limited to 1 MB in size and a maximum of 50 data rows (CSV) or 50 objects (JSON). Learn more about uploading a data file for a monitor.

Because scheduled collection runs and monitors run in the Postman cloud, you can't attach form data or binary files to requests like you can in the request builder. Instead, you can add raw data on the request's Body tab to send JSON or other text data with the request.

A monitor can also use files that can be retrieved by an API from cloud services such as Google Docs or Dropbox.

Monitor updates

Can I move a monitor?

Monitors can't be moved between workspaces. If you move a collection out of the workspace where its associated monitor is located, the monitor is paused. To learn more, see Moving elements to workspaces.

Can I delete a monitor?

You can delete a monitor at any time. Once deleted, all run history for the monitor is deleted too. If you want to retain the history, pause the monitor instead of deleting it.

Privacy and security

Are static IP addresses dedicated to individual customers or shared?

The provided static IP addresses are fixed to their specified region and shared by all customers who enable this feature, which is available to Postman Professional and Enterprise teams. For more information, see Configure Postman Monitors to run from static IPs.

Who can see my monitors?

A monitor is visible to all users who have access to the workspace the monitor was created in. To learn more, see Move elements to workspaces.

Who can edit my monitors?

Monitors can be edited in their respective workspace by members who have been granted Editor permissions on the monitor. To review or manage which team members have Editor or Viewer permissions on a specific monitor, open your workspace and select Monitors in the sidebar. Select View more actions next to a monitor, and then select Manage Roles.

Where do monitors run?

Monitors run on Postman's cloud infrastructure, which is hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS). More information about Postman's cloud infrastructure is available on the Security overview.

Can monitors access private networks?

Because monitors run in the Postman cloud, all URLs must be publicly available on the internet. A monitor can't directly access your localhost or run requests behind a firewall. Also, you can't monitor APIs that run on private networks, VPNs, or corporate intranets. For monitors, you can use static IPs to overcome this issue. Static IPs are available with Postman Professional and Enterprise plans.

Performance and troubleshooting

Will monitors impact my API performance?

To limit the impact of monitor activity on your API, you can configure which of your API endpoints are called and how often they're called. Postman also restricts each monitor's total runtime to 10 minutes (Postman Free plans) or 15 minutes (Postman paid plans). This limits the number of requests the monitor can perform.

How do I troubleshoot problems?

For monitors, you can view the full Postman Console output for every monitor run, including any errors. You can also use methods such as console.log() and console.warn() to output your own debugging information. You can use the console.clear() method to clear information from the Console. To learn more, see Troubleshooting monitors.

For your security and privacy, Postman doesn't log request or response bodies in the Console. Postman also doesn't log headers, as they may include items like cookies and authorization keys.