Postman
Unicorn · $5.6BSan Francisco, US · Founded 2014 · 21 known investors
Postman is an API platform that helps developers build, test, and manage APIs throughout their lifecycle. It serves organizations across industries, including 98% of the Fortune 500, and provides tooling for API development, quality assurance, and organizational governance.
Also known as Postman, Inc.
Founders & leadership
Postman was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, and Abhijit Kane.
Investors · 21
Also in the syndicate · 1
Valuation · disclosed
Disclosed eventsSource: SEC prospectus filings, and round valuations the company or its investors disclosed — follow each entry's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Postman, Inc. is an American software company offering an API platform used by developers to design, build, test, document, and manage APIs across their lifecycle. The product began as a Chrome Web Store extension for simplifying API testing and has grown into a broader platform whose components include personal, team, partner, and public Workspaces; an API repository for storing and cataloging API artifacts; an API builder supporting specifications such as OpenAPI, GraphQL, and RAML with integrations to source control, CI/CD, gateways, and APM tools; and tooling for API client work, design, documentation, testing, mock servers, and API detection. An intelligence layer provides security warnings, repository search, reporting, and API governance.
Postman also operates the Postman API Network, a directory of more than 100,000 public APIs described as the world's largest such collection, and public workspaces that let organizations such as Mercedes-Benz, Notion, and Microsoft Graph publish and collaborate on APIs. Version 11, released in May 2024, added AI-assisted test generation, documentation, debugging, and data visualization. In March 2026 the company launched a rebuilt, AI-native version of the platform positioned for agentic use cases, with Git-connected Workspaces, an organization-wide API Catalog, and an embedded AI intelligence layer; its current site markets an "AI Engineer" that builds, tests, and maintains APIs against the context of a customer's existing services.
Founding story
Postman began in 2012 in Bangalore as a side project by software engineer Abhinav Asthana, who wanted to simplify API testing while working at Yahoo Bangalore. He named the tool after the API "POST" request and distributed it free through the Chrome Web Store. After usage reached roughly 500,000 users without marketing, and with investor interest, Asthana recruited former colleagues Ankit Sobti and Abhijit Kane in 2014 to form Postman, Inc. Asthana serves as CEO and Sobti as CTO, and all three co-founders continue to lead the company.
Business model
Postman sells access to its API platform under tiered pricing, ranging from free plans for individuals and small teams to paid plans for larger companies and enterprises. It combines bottom-up adoption by individual developers with enterprise contracts that add governance, security, and administrative capabilities such as user groups and SCIM integration.
Subscription software licensing across free and paid tiers, with higher-priced plans aimed at larger companies and enterprises. The company declined to disclose revenue at the time of its 2021 Series D; an investor described the round as priced at over 100 times revenue.
Traction
Postman reported 17 million developers on the platform and more than 60 million app downloads in August 2021, with over 500,000 organizations using the product; by September 2025 Forbes cited 40 million users. The company states that 500,000 companies, including 98% of the Fortune 500, use the platform. The Public API Network grew past 20,000 public workspaces by 2021 and lists over 100,000 public APIs. Headcount rose from more than 425 employees in 2021 to 836 as of September 2025.
Latest developments
In November 2025 Postman acquired liblab to automate SDK generation and maintenance as part of a unified API lifecycle platform. In March 2026 it launched a rebuilt AI-native platform for the agentic era, with Git-connected Workspaces, an API Catalog, and an integrated AI intelligence layer; the current website promotes an AI Engineer product. Stable release 12.17 was published on 29 June 2026. Forbes noted in September 2025 the company's shift toward AI with features such as Agent Mode and an AI Agent Builder.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Described by press and by the company as the leading API platform, with a large installed base of individual developers and enterprise customers, including a reported 98% of the Fortune 500. TechCrunch reported in 2021 that the startup leads the market while naming Stoplight and Kong as competitors, alongside open-source command-line alternatives such as curl and HTTPie.
Postman positions itself on breadth of API lifecycle coverage in a single platform (design, testing, documentation, mock servers, monitoring, and governance), collaboration through shared and public workspaces, the scale of its Public API Network, and free-tier accessibility that drives developer adoption. More recently it differentiates on an AI-native, Git-native architecture aimed at agentic workflows.
Technology
The platform supports API specifications including OpenAPI, GraphQL, and RAML, and protocols such as WebSockets and SOAP, with stated roadmap work on gRPC and ProtoBuf. It integrates with source control, CI/CD systems, API gateways, and APM and monitoring vendors including Datadog, New Relic, Opsgenie, and AWS API Gateway, as well as Git hosting providers. The 2026 architecture is Git-native, letting developers work on the same branch as their IDE, and embeds an AI layer plus an "AI Engineer" for building, testing, and maintaining APIs. Postman maintains open-source repositories under the postmanlabs GitHub organization.
Go-to-market
Bottom-up, developer-led distribution via a free downloadable app and web product, supplemented by enterprise sales and marketing. Community programs are central: the Postman Galaxy conference (over 26,000 registrations in February 2021), the Breaking Changes talk show, Postman Intergalactic trainings, The Exploratory video series, student programs and a Student Summit, Postman for Nonprofits, and participation in the OpenAPI Initiative and AsyncAPI. Public workspaces and the Public API Network act as discovery and distribution channels. Proceeds from the Series D were earmarked for hiring across sales, marketing, product, and engineering.
Individual developers and small teams using free tiers, through to large enterprises requiring governance and scale. Named customers include Salesforce, Stripe, Kroger, Cisco, PayPal, Microsoft, Shopify, WhatsApp, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, and Medibank, spanning technology, retail, financial services, and healthcare.
Geography
Headquartered in San Francisco (One Market Plaza, 1 Market Street, Steuart Tower), with offices in Bangalore, India — where the company was founded — and Tokyo, Japan, plus distributed team members on multiple continents in a hybrid working model.
History
Started as a Chrome extension in 2012 and incorporated as a company in 2014, Postman raised a $1 million seed round in May 2015. It moved its corporate headquarters from Bangalore to San Francisco in 2017. A Series C valued the company at about $2 billion in 2020, followed in August 2021 by a $225 million Series D at a $5.6 billion valuation. Subsequent expansion came partly through acquisitions: Akita Software in 2023 for API observability, Orbit in 2024 for developer community management, and liblab in November 2025 for automated SDK generation. Postman v11 shipped in May 2024, and a rebuilt AI-native platform launched in March 2026.
Risks & controversies
Sources note competitive pressure from vendors such as Stoplight and Kong and from free open-source tools like curl and HTTPie. The 2021 Series D was reported to be priced at more than 100 times revenue, which was undisclosed, indicating valuation risk. Wikipedia's article carries a maintenance notice that it relies excessively on primary sources, limiting independent verification of some claims.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 2
by search overlap
Companies competing with Postman for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 8
launches, deals, and filingsStable software release version 12.17 published in Postman's release notes.
Postman launched a rebuilt AI-native platform featuring Git-connected Workspaces, an API Catalog for managing APIs across organizations, and an AI intelligence layer; the Git-native architecture lets developers work on the same branch as their IDE.
Postman acquired liblab, a platform that automates the generation and maintenance of software development kits (SDKs), to advance a unified API lifecycle platform.
Postman v11 added AI-powered features for API test generation, documentation, debugging, and data visualization.
Postman acquired Orbit, a solution for building and managing developer communities.
Postman announced the acquisition of Akita, adding API observability capabilities.
Series D round of $225 million led by Insight Partners, valuing the company at $5.6 billion, up from $2 billion a year earlier; brought total raised across all rounds to more than $430 million.
$225M source ↗
Postman relocated its corporate headquarters from Bangalore, India to San Francisco, United States.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Postmanpostman.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Postman do?
- Postman is an API platform for developing, testing, managing, and distributing APIs, used by 500,000 organizations.
- Who founded Postman?
- Postman was founded by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, Abhijit Kane in 2014.
- Who are Postman's investors?
- Postman's investors include Battery Ventures, Insight Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, 83North, Altra Venture, Coatue Management, CRV (Charles River Ventures), Draft Ventures Llc and 12 more.
- Where is Postman headquartered?
- Postman is headquartered in San Francisco, US.