Three months ago our team was in a bad place. Every release meant two full days of manually re-checking API endpoints, and we still kept missing regressions that only showed up after deploy. During one especially rough sprint, a broken payment endpoint made it to production because the one person who knew that test flow was on leave. That was my wake-up call that our whole approach was held together by memory and luck. I spent a weekend properly researching what modern teams actually use and came across a detailed roundup of api testing tools that compared everything from the classic clients to newer open source options that record real traffic and turn it into automated tests. We ended up rebuilding our workflow around automation in CI, and the difference is honestly night and day. Releases that took two days of checking now take twenty minutes, and nothing depends on one person remembering a test flow anymore. If your team is still testing APIs by hand, learn from our near-miss and fix it before a deadline forces you to.
https://keploy.io/blog/community/api-testing-tools