Comparison

A Postman alternative built for Business Central

Updated 2 November 2026

Postman is an excellent general API tool, and it works with Business Central. It just doesn't know anything about Business Central. You look up entity names, paste company GUIDs and write JSON from documentation. Ava does the same everyday job, and reads your tenant to do the rest.

Side by side

What you need	Ava	Postman
Send requests, collections, environments	Yes	Yes
Postman collection import and export	Yes	Native
Browse your tenant's entities and bound actions	Yes	No
JSON bodies and requests built from `$metadata`	Yes	No
Company picker	Yes	No
ETag captured and sent as `If-Match`	Yes, with `{{$etag}}`	By hand or by script
Business Central errors explained	Yes	No
AL `HttpClient` code generation	Yes	No
Tests and a collection runner	Yes, no code needed	Yes, in JavaScript
JavaScript scripting	No	Yes
Install	Runs in your browser	Desktop app or browser agent

When to choose Ava

Most of the APIs you work with are Business Central, including custom API pages and web services.
You want a working call quickly, without reading up on entity names and tokens first.
You write AL, and want the calling code generated from a request that already works.

When Postman is the better choice

You rely on JavaScript in pre-request or test scripts. Ava's tests need no code, but it doesn't run scripts.
You work mostly with APIs other than Business Central, and use Postman's wider ecosystem.
You use NTLM authentication, which Ava doesn't support yet.

Moving over

Export your collection from Postman as v2.1 and import it into Ava, and do the same with your environments. Secrets aren't carried across, so you'll enter those once. Import and export are included on the Free plan.