Stainless vs Speakeasy vs Fern
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Stainless
Acquired by Anthropic; SDK generator closed to new signups (2026).
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Speakeasy
OpenAPI to SDKs and MCP servers - now pitching an AI control plane.
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Fern
Input OpenAPI. Output production-ready SDKs and beautiful API docs — a...
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| RECATOOLS Score | 8.5 / 10 | 8.2 / 10 | 8.4 / 10 |
| Capability | |||
| Value for money | |||
| Ease of use | |||
| ASEAN readiness | |||
| API quality | |||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | Free plan: up to 5 SDK generators, 25 endpoints, 5 seats (pre-wind-down) | 1 language, up to 250 API operations, SDK and MCP generation included | Hobby plan: free forever, 2 members, 250 AI credits, custom domain |
| Paid from | ~$250/month per SDK (Starter); enterprise custom from ~$30K/year (pre-wind-down) | $720/month per language (Business); Enterprise custom pricing | Docs Team from $150/mo (annual saves ~25%); SDK generation priced separately; Enterprise custom |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | Hundreds of paying API companies; SDKs downloaded tens of millions of times/week | ~3,000 users; 7,250+ SDKs generated as of late 2024 | Used by companies including Square and Adobe; distributed via Postman post-acquisition |
| Founded | 2022 | 2022 | 2022 |
| Maker | Anthropic (acquired May 2026) | Speakeasy (independent, Series A-backed) | Postman |
| Verdict | Note: Stainless was acquired by Anthropic; the hosted product has been closed to new customers since May 2026.Stainless earned real trust before the acquisition: OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, Cloudflare and Groq all s... |
Speakeasy remains one of the strongest choices for API-first teams needing production-grade, polyglot SDKs without maintaining ten separate codebases - no proprietary DSL, no vendor lock-in, and a CLI that runs fully air... |
Nordic APIs picked Fern as the best of eight SDK generators it tested in 2025, and the reasoning holds up: the output reads like a senior engineer wrote it by hand, not a template. The open-source core (Apache 2.0, 3.7k... |
| Full review → | Full review → | Full review → |
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.