APIBench: Test REST APIs Directly From Your Phone

Most developers use desktop tools for API testing — Postman, Insomnia, curl. But there are scenarios where testing from a phone is either more convenient or gives you results that a desktop tool can't: checking how your API behaves from a mobile network, testing while away from your desk, or quickly verifying an endpoint when you only have your phone available.

What APIBench Does

APIBench is a REST API client for Android with full request building capabilities:

• All HTTP methods — GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS
• Custom headers — add Authorization, Content-Type, or any other header
• Request body — raw JSON, form data, or plain text
• JSON response viewer — formatted, syntax-highlighted output with collapsible sections
• Collections — save frequently used requests and organise them by project
• History — every request is saved automatically so you can go back to any previous call
• Response metadata — status code, response time, headers, and body size are all visible

Why Mobile API Testing Matters

Your API probably behaves differently on a mobile network than on your office WiFi. Mobile connections have higher latency, can lose connectivity mid-request, and often go through carrier NAT that changes source IP addresses. Testing from APIBench on your phone gives you a realistic picture of what your mobile users are experiencing.

It's also useful for quick production checks. If you get a page at 2am about a broken endpoint, opening APIBench on your phone is faster than opening a laptop and navigating to Postman.

Collections: Organising Your Requests

Collections let you group related requests by project or API. A collection for your main product's API might have requests for authentication, user management, and data endpoints. You can run individual requests or work through a collection testing each endpoint in sequence.

Authentication Patterns

Most APIs use one of three auth patterns:

• Bearer token — add Authorization: Bearer <token> as a header. Get the token from a login request and paste it in.
• API key — typically a custom header like X-API-Key: your-key or a query parameter like ?api_key=your-key
• Basic Auth — Authorization: Basic <base64(username:password)>. You can generate the Base64 value with our Base64 encoder.

APIBench lets you set these directly in the headers for each request, or save them to a collection so you don't have to re-enter them every time.

Download APIBench from Google Play — free, no sign-up required.