When you're building something that relies on APIs, testing can often slow you down. I’ve run into this more times than I can count, whether it’s waiting for an endpoint to be implemented, or trying to reproduce an error state that only happens once in a while.

Having a way to control API responses during development or automated testing helps a lot, and it's a great skill to unblock yourself.

Then I discovered Beeceptor during one of those moments. I needed an endpoint that could return a few specific types of responses—sometimes a 200, sometimes a 500, and occasionally, a long delay to test how retry logic handled timeouts.

I wasn’t looking to set up a full backend or spin up a local server just for this. Beeceptor turned out to be a handy way to set things up quickly.

Beeceptor let's you create your own API endpoint directly from the homepage. Once it’s ready (intantly - which I liked the most), you can define exactly how it behaves. I tried out various combinations changing the status code, editing the response body, and even introducing delays. There’s also an option to create rules that trigger different responses based on request conditions. It gave me just enough control without having to write scripts or manage any infrastructure.

Sometimes I didn’t even need my own setup. Beeceptor offered a set of ready-to-use test APIs. These are already hosted, and you can send GET or POST requests to them as-is. I used them when writing unit tests that required a predictable HTTP response, or while setting up tools that needed a test endpoint during onboarding. If you're curious, the link is here: Beeceptor Dummy APIs.

There are other ways to test APIs, of course, and depending on the project, I’ve also used Postman, local Express servers, or even written simple Flask apps. But for cases where I just need something quick and adjustable—without writing more code or running another service—Beeceptor has been a go-to.

It’s not a complete replacement for backend testing, but it definitely helps in all those "I just need this to return X so I can move forward" situations. If you're working on an integration, building error-handling flows, or just trying to check how your app behaves under certain conditions, you might find it useful too. It worked well for me.