Animation: in a Postman Free workspace, invites to four teammates each come back "Team plan required". The same workspace then becomes Elva Free: every invite flips to Joined, the team grows to 12 members, and a hosted MCP server appears with Claude, Cursor, and ChatGPT calling it.
Postman locked your team out. Elva lets them back in.
Import the collection. Unlimited teammates. One hosted MCP.
- Unlimitedmembers
- 1 repounlimited endpoints
- Specgenerated from code
- 1 hosted MCP1,000 calls a month
Postman, : the Free plan is limited to one user and can’t create a team.
Their docs
Bring the collection. Import takes a minute.
Everything you built in Postman comes with you. Nothing to rewrite.
Everything comes with it
Requests, folders, environments, and auth. The collection works the minute it lands.
Collection or spec, either works
Start from the Postman export or an OpenAPI file. Connect the repo later and the spec comes from code.
The team comes too
The people who already use the collection join with one paste. Seats stay free.
Everything Postman Free leaves out
The client was never the hard part. This is what your APIs need once a team and its agents depend on them.
Postman: the API Catalog is an Enterprise-plan feature. Their docs
- 31 descriptions written from code
- 12 response schemas typed
- Auth documented on billing routes
On Free: collection-level scores and 10 AI fixes a month. Paid plans add endpoint-level scores and more fixes.
Postman: the MCP Generator hands you a ZIP to run and host yourself. Their docs
On Free, the hosted server reports its status and calls today. Per-agent and per-key logs come with the gateway on Scale. With a server you host yourself, they are yours to build.
Postman has no per-audience contracts. In Elva, Startup adds an internal contract; Scale adds every audience and policies that block a breaking change.
What stays free
Request testing is a tie. The rest is the team, the catalog, and a hosted MCP.
| Feature | Postman Free | Elva Free |
|---|---|---|
| Team members | 1, can’t create a team | Unlimited |
| API catalog | Enterprise plan only | Every endpoint in 1 repo |
| Spec from code | You write and sync it | Generated from the repo |
| Hosted MCP | Generates a ZIP, you host it | 1 server, 1,000 calls a month |
| Collections and request testing | Both. Tie. | |
| Price shape | Free for one, then per seat | Free for the team, then flat |
Keep Postman while you switch
Some of your team will want the Postman client for a while. Let them. On Scale, every sync writes a fresh Postman collection, so nobody works from a stale copy. Run both for a week, then decide.
- Jake pushed a change to the repoa91f2c4 add refund reason
- Elva updated the specPOST /v2/payments/{id}/refund now takes reason
- Elva exported a fresh Postman collectionpayments.postman_collection.jsonv38
- Ryan imported it into PostmanStill in the client, already up to date
- Claude called refund_payment with the new fieldthrough the hosted MCP
Postman locked your team out. Elva lets them back in.
Import your collection and bring the whole team. Free on your first repo, no card, no sales call.
Postman plan details are from Postman’s public documentation as of March 2026. Postman is a trademark of Postman, Inc. Elva is not affiliated with Postman.