llms.txt
# Routebase
> Routebase keeps your docs, mocks, and tests in sync with your API. Those copies drift apart as soon as the API changes, because each of them holds its own version of the contract. One living OpenAPI specification is the single source of truth instead, so you change it once and the docs, mock servers, tests, and monitors follow in a single publish. Routebase writes that specification for you if your API doesn't have one. Its testing replaces Postman collections outright with declarative test suites, chained scenarios, data-driven runs, OWASP API Top 10 scanning, and a CLI that gates CI, with or without a spec. Every workspace ships a built-in MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that covers the full feature set, so AI agents work the same spec as your team under the same permissions.
The platform covers the lifecycle in six stages, which are Design (visual OpenAPI editor with spec branches and merge requests), Mock (spec-driven mock servers with realistic data), Test (suites, assertions, OWASP security scanning), Document (published docs portals), Monitor (uptime and contract checks with drift events and alert policies), and Agents (MCP server).
An existing OpenAPI file is not a prerequisite. Start from an empty specification and add endpoints in the visual editor, from a CRUD or auth template, or from a Postman or Insomnia collection, and Routebase builds the OpenAPI as you go. Testing works with no specification at all, because a test case is a plain HTTP request, and linking it to a designed endpoint is optional and only needed for contract testing.
## What Routebase is
- An API testing tool: test cases are plain HTTP requests with one of ten auth schemes; assertions are declarative (6 types × 10 operators, no test scripts to maintain); cases chain into scenarios that pass extracted values downstream; suites run once per row of a data set, on a cron schedule, or in CI via the CLI and GitHub Action with exit codes. A Postman or Insomnia collection imports as a specification, and one click generates a test case per endpoint from it. No OpenAPI spec is required to write tests.
- An API security scanner: OWASP API Top 10 scanning with 13 scanners, multi-identity personas, finding triage, and a CI gate.
- An API design tool: a visual OpenAPI 3.0 to 3.2 editor with JSON Schema builder, spec branches with merge requests, and built-in governance lint rules.
- A mock server: spec-driven mocks with realistic data, stateful behavior, latency and failure simulation.
- An API documentation portal: branded, on your own domain, with try-it console, search, versioning, and llms.txt output.
- An API monitor: uptime and check monitoring with alert policies, plus contract drift detection between spec and production.
- An MCP server: it covers the full feature set, so AI agents design, test, and document under your workspace's permissions.
## Full content
- [llms-full.txt](https://routebase.dev/llms-full.txt): the complete site content as a single markdown document
## Pages
- [Homepage](https://routebase.dev/index.md): product overview, lifecycle stages, FAQ
- [API Design](https://routebase.dev/api-design.md): visual OpenAPI editor, JSON Schema builder, spec branches with merge requests, governance lint rules, OpenAPI 3.0 to 3.2 import and export
- [API Mocking](https://routebase.dev/api-mocking.md): spec-driven mock servers, realistic synthetic data, stateful mocks, latency and failure simulation, proxy mode
- [API Testing](https://routebase.dev/api-testing.md): test suites with 6 assertion types and 10 operators, ten auth schemes, fixtures/seeds/snapshots, OWASP API Top 10 scanning, CLI and CI automation
- [API Documentation](https://routebase.dev/api-documentation.md): branded docs portals with try-it playground, search, custom domains with auto-SSL, llms.txt output for published docs
- [MCP Server](https://routebase.dev/mcp-server.md): connect AI agents via MCP — design a whole OpenAPI spec and its test suites by prompt; the full feature set as tools, 13 prompts, 12 resources, OAuth remote connector or stdio, RBAC-scoped permissions
- [API Monitoring](https://routebase.dev/api-monitoring.md): uptime and contract checks generated from the spec, drift events with field-level diffs, alert policies with cooldowns, incidents and maintenance windows, Slack and Teams alerts, from Pro
- [Pricing](https://routebase.dev/pricing.md): Free plan ($0 forever); Starter $9, Pro $19, and Enterprise $39 per user/month billed annually ($11/$23/$45 billed monthly); same amounts in EUR for European customers. Enterprise includes SAML SSO, SCIM, and audit log export — self-service, 25 seats minimum. Every account starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no credit card required
- [Microsoft Marketplace](https://routebase.dev/microsoft-marketplace.md): buy Routebase through Microsoft Marketplace — Starter, Pro, and Enterprise at the same USD list prices, billed by Microsoft on your existing account and shown in your local currency; Microsoft Entra ID sign-in, EU or US region on Azure; the Free plan is direct only
## Solutions
- [API-first development](https://routebase.dev/api-first-development.md): API-first development as one workflow: a visual OpenAPI editor, spec branches with merge requests and 21 breaking-change rules, a published version that freezes, a mock server and test suites that report pending until the backend lands, and environment pins your pipeline sets with routebase promote
- [API governance](https://routebase.dev/api-governance.md): API governance as organization settings: style guide rules with a severity per rule and per-project overrides, custom rules from a target, a field and a condition, a shared library of schemas and responses, header policies that cascade, a quality score with alert thresholds, and enforcement on publish as a separate switch
- [Agent-ready APIs](https://routebase.dev/agent-ready-apis.md): agent-ready APIs from the spec your team writes: a description editor with enum labels exported as x-enumNames, a shared error component with problem+json rules, llms.txt and Markdown twins from every docs portal, and an MCP server with 13 prompts and 12 resources under team permissions
- [Migrate from Postman](https://routebase.dev/migrate-from-postman.md): migrate from Postman or Insomnia: Postman Collection v2.1 and Insomnia Export v4 import natively as an OpenAPI specification with a preview and warnings before anything is written; schemas inferred from examples; test cases generated from the spec; an agent rebuilds assertions over MCP; export back to Postman, Insomnia, YAML or JSON
- [Data Residency](https://routebase.dev/data-residency.md): EU or US data residency chosen at signup on every plan; each region runs its own database, storage, background jobs and monitoring; docs portals and mock servers are served from the region; hosted only, no self-hosted edition
## Comparisons
- [Postman Alternative](https://routebase.dev/postman-alternative.md): Postman alternative for API testing and the lifecycle around it — declarative suites, scenarios, data-driven runs, ten auth schemes, OWASP scans, CLI in CI, plus design, mocks, docs, and monitoring from one spec; imports Postman and Insomnia collections; EU or US hosting
- [Stoplight Alternative](https://routebase.dev/stoplight-alternative.md): Stoplight alternative covering the whole lifecycle — design-first OpenAPI editing plus test execution, monitoring, and built-in governance, EU-hosted
- [ReadMe Alternative](https://routebase.dev/readme-alternative.md): ReadMe alternative with per-user pricing — branded docs portals from OpenAPI, plus mocks, tests, and monitoring from the same spec
- [Swagger Alternative](https://routebase.dev/swagger-alternative.md): Swagger alternative for teams that outgrew Swagger UI and Editor or hit SwaggerHub's limits — visual OpenAPI design, branded docs portal on your own domain, test runs counted per suite rather than per test, mocks, and monitoring from one spec
- [Insomnia Alternative](https://routebase.dev/insomnia-alternative.md): Insomnia alternative that adds what a client does not cover — a hosted docs portal, spec branches with merge requests, and API monitoring; imports Insomnia Export v4 natively and exports back to it
- [Apidog Alternative](https://routebase.dev/apidog-alternative.md): Apidog alternative for teams that need EU or US data residency on every plan rather than an enterprise tier, API monitoring, and an MCP server an agent can build with — not only read from
- [Bruno Alternative](https://routebase.dev/bruno-alternative.md): Routebase next to Bruno — Bruno keeps collections local and offline, Routebase runs what has to be shared: hosted mock servers with a stable URL, a published docs portal, scheduled runs and monitoring
- [Mintlify Alternative](https://routebase.dev/mintlify-alternative.md): Mintlify alternative where the docs portal is generated from a spec you also design, mock, test and monitor in the same product; per-user pricing that undercuts a flat rate below roughly 24 editors
## Guides
Long-form guides on API testing, API authentication, API versioning, API documentation, OpenAPI, API monitoring, API design, API mocking, API governance and API security. Each chapter covers one method, what it finds and what it does not, and how to put it into practice. The overview of each guide lists its chapters, the guides index lists every chapter of every guide, and the full text of every chapter is included in llms-full.txt.
- [All guides](https://routebase.dev/guides/index.md): the index of every guide and every chapter
- [API Design](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-design/index.md): The decisions you make before you write a line of OpenAPI, from resource shape and method semantics through errors, pagination, idempotency and rate limits, each one with what it costs. Eleven chapters.
- [OpenAPI](https://routebase.dev/guides/openapi/index.md): What an OpenAPI document is, how one is put together, how to write schemas that hold up, how to validate and lint it, and everything you can derive from the file once it exists. Eleven chapters.
- [API Mocking](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-mocking/index.md): What a mock server answers and what it never proves, how one is generated from a contract, how to make it behave like the network it replaces, and how to stop it drifting. Eleven chapters.
- [API Documentation](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-documentation/index.md): What belongs in API documentation, how to write it, how to keep it true while the API changes, and how to publish and measure it. Ten chapters from the page inventory through hosting.
- [API Testing](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-testing/index.md): The methods, the strategy that ties them together, and how to run each one in practice. Twelve chapters covering functional, contract, workflow, data-driven, performance, security and production testing.
- [API Authentication](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-authentication/index.md): Every method worth knowing, from API keys and JWT through the OAuth 2.0 grants to mutual TLS, with the trade-offs of each and how to set them up. Eleven chapters, every security claim sourced to its RFC.
- [API Security](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-security/index.md): The OWASP API Security Top 10 from 2023 as a working map, what each category looks like from the outside, how to scan a running API for them, and what no scanner will ever find. Thirteen chapters.
- [API Versioning](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-versioning/index.md): Every versioning method, what each one costs, when a new version is unavoidable, and when the right answer is not to version at all. Twelve chapters from breaking changes through deprecation and sunset.
- [API Monitoring](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-monitoring/index.md): What to watch on a live API, which kinds of check answer which question, how to set thresholds and alerts people still read, and how to catch a response that is wrong while the status code stays green. Ten chapters.
- [API Governance](https://routebase.dev/guides/api-governance/index.md): How a design decision keeps applying to every API your organisation ships, including the ones built next quarter by people who were not in the room. Eleven chapters.
## Blog
Practical writing on designing, mocking, testing, and shipping APIs and on making them ready for AI agents. Full text of every post is included in llms-full.txt.
- [How We Got Our Docs to 100 on the Agent-Friendly Docs Scorecard](https://routebase.dev/blog/agent-friendly-docs-scorecard/index.md) (2026-10-06): We took routebase.dev from 87 to 100 on the open Agent-Friendly Docs Scorecard in one day. What failed, the four fixes, and the CDN header detail that nearly broke it.
- [Three Years Later: What Happened to 1,927 Public API Specs](https://routebase.dev/blog/public-api-specs-three-years-later/index.md) (2026-09-24): We fetched 1,927 public OpenAPI specs again and compared each with its 2023 copy. About half had changed, and nine in ten breaking changes had no new major.
- [Where Should Your OpenAPI Spec Live?](https://routebase.dev/blog/where-should-your-openapi-spec-live/index.md) (2026-09-15): Repo or hosted is the wrong question. What decides whether your API has one contract or several is which copy the others derive from, and who runs that step.
- [Why API Style Guides Fail With Too Many Rules](https://routebase.dev/blog/what-belongs-in-an-api-style-guide/index.md) (2026-09-01): Most style guides fail with too many rules, not too few. The work is deciding which rules stop a build, which leave a note, and which you will never enforce.
- [API Descriptions That Pass the Linter and Fail the Agent](https://routebase.dev/blog/api-descriptions-llms-can-use/index.md) (2026-08-25): A linter flags a missing description, not a useless one, and the useless one is what an agent chokes on. What to write, what to leave out, and how to test it.
- [Migrating from Postman to an OpenAPI-First Workflow](https://routebase.dev/blog/migrating-from-postman-to-openapi-first/index.md) (2026-08-14): The Postman migration everyone postpones is mostly mechanical, and that is agent work. How an AI over MCP imports collections and rebuilds your assertions.
- [Why Your OpenAPI Spec Drifts (and How to Catch It)](https://routebase.dev/blog/why-openapi-specs-drift/index.md) (2026-07-24): Every API contract decays once nothing enforces it. The four ways specs drift, why code generation does not save you, and how to make the spec true again.
- [Consistent Error Handling with RFC 9457 Problem Details](https://routebase.dev/blog/consistent-error-handling-rfc-9457/index.md) (2026-07-08): Why every API needs exactly one error shape, how RFC 9457 Problem Details provides it, and the conventions that make it stick across every endpoint.
- [API Design Principles: A Practical Guide](https://routebase.dev/blog/api-design-principles/index.md) (2026-07-07): Six design decisions that make or break an API, from resource modeling, naming, and idempotency to pagination, error formats, and versioning, with examples.
- [Designing Agent-Ready APIs](https://routebase.dev/blog/designing-agent-ready-apis/index.md) (2026-07-06): AI agents are becoming API consumers. What that changes about API design, from descriptions as prompts and actionable errors to MCP as the new surface.
- [Design-First vs. Code-First API Development](https://routebase.dev/blog/design-first-vs-code-first/index.md) (2026-07-03): Two workflows for building APIs, and why the order you write the contract in changes everything downstream, from parallel work and review quality to drift.
- [Versioning APIs Without Breaking Your Consumers](https://routebase.dev/blog/api-versioning-without-breaking-consumers/index.md) (2026-07-01): What actually counts as a breaking change, why additive evolution beats version bumps, and how to run a deprecation your consumers will forgive.
## Changelog
- [Changelog](https://routebase.dev/changelog.md): the latest released versions with their dates and what each added, improved or changed, newest first
- [Earlier releases](https://routebase.dev/changelog/archive.md): the older versions in the same format
## Support
- [Support](https://routebase.dev/support/): how to reach us — email support, a contact form, and what to include so the first reply solves it
## Documentation
The product documentation lives on its own host and is not part of this site's content above.
- [Routebase documentation](https://docs.routebase.dev/): guides for every part of the product — designing specs, mock servers, test suites, security scanning, monitoring, docs portals, the MCP server, and the CLI
- [Documentation llms.txt](https://docs.routebase.dev/llms.txt): the full page index of the documentation portal
## Legal
- [Terms of Service](https://routebase.dev/terms/): B2B terms of service — Routebase sells to businesses only
- [Privacy Policy](https://routebase.dev/privacy/): privacy policy for this website
- [Privacy Policy (Application)](https://routebase.dev/privacy/app/): privacy policy for the application at app.routebase.dev
- [Legal Notice](https://routebase.dev/imprint/): legal notice / imprint (Routebase GmbH)
## App
- [Sign up](https://app.routebase.dev/): every account starts with a 14-day Pro trial, no credit card required. Free plan available. EU or US data residency, chosen at signup.
