Explore Postman's command-line companion

The Postman CLI is a secure command-line companion for Postman. It’s signed and supported by Postman, like the Postman app. The Postman CLI supports the following features:

Sign in and sign out of Postman from the command line.
Validate, synchronize, and push local collections and environments to Postman workspaces in the cloud.
Run a collection with its collection ID or path, and send the run results to the Postman cloud by default.
Run a monitor in the Postman cloud with its monitor ID.
Start a runner in your internal network to monitor APIs with private endpoints.
Run a performance test with the specified collection ID.
Generate a local collection run report with built-in reporters.
Check API definitions against configured API governance rules.

The Postman CLI requires a valid Postman API key. For more information, see Generate and use Postman API keys.

The Postman desktop app also supports a built-in terminal with Native Git.

Comparing the Postman CLI and Newman

The table below shows a high-level comparison of the Postman CLI and Newman.

Postman CLI	Newman
Created by Postman	Created by Postman
Maintained and supported by Postman	Open source; supported by community contributions
Supports collection runs	Supports collection runs
Automatically sends collection run results to Postman by default	Supports ingesting run results to Postman using a reporter
Package is signed by Postman	Package isn’t signed by Postman
Distributed as a downloadable package	Distributed on npm
Downloadable programmatically	Downloadable programmatically
Not available as a library	Available as a library
Supports sign in and sign out	Doesn’t support sign in and sign out
Checks API specifications against your configured API governance rules	Doesn’t check API specifications against your configured API governance rules

Decide which command-line companion to use

You can use the Postman CLI or Newman to run and test collections from the command line. One may be a better fit, depending on your use case or preferences.

For example, assume you already manage your own security for open-source software, and you want to run collections from a script. Also assume you want visibility into any software you build into your CI/CD pipeline. Newman would be a good fit for this use case because Newman’s repository is public and Newman isn’t signed or secured by Postman.

Here’s another example. Assume you don’t already support or secure any open-source software, and you want the software you use to be signed and secured by its developer. The Postman CLI would be a good fit for this use case because the Postman CLI is signed and secured by Postman.

Learn how to install the Postman CLI.