Migrate from Apidog in 20 Minutes

If you've been on Apidog for a while and the per-seat invoice has started to look like an enterprise CRM bill — this guide gets you off it and onto Outworx Docs in about twenty minutes. We'll cover exporting your spec, recreating your collections, migrating mocks, dropping the desktop client, and the redirects that protect your SEO during the cutover.

Apidog bundles design + mocking + docs + testing into a single desktop app. That's a great pitch on day one. By month six, the per-seat model means a five-person team is paying $45+/mo before adding a single hosted mock, the desktop app's nag-screens get tiresome, and you're stuck with a workflow that requires a heavy install on every machine. If that sounds familiar, keep reading.

Step 1 — Export your spec from Apidog (3 minutes)

Apidog stores everything as proprietary project files internally, but exports cleanly to OpenAPI 3.x.

1. Open your Apidog project (desktop or web)
2. Project settings → Export
3. Choose OpenAPI 3.0 / 3.1 (the JSON form is most portable)
4. Untick "include test cases" — those don't migrate; they're Apidog-specific
5. Save the file

You get a .json file. If you have multiple environments configured in Apidog, the export bundles their servers: block automatically. Confirm the active environment is the one you want as the default in production — Outworx will use the first server from that list as the default Try It target.

If your Apidog project uses shared schemas (the Components panel), they all come through under components/schemas correctly. If you've used Apidog's "data models" feature with cross-project references, flatten those to one project before exporting — cross-project $ref doesn't survive the round-trip.

Step 2 — Upload to Outworx Docs (1 minute)

1. Sign up at docs.outworx.io — free tier, no credit card.
2. Click New Project, name it after your API, pick a slug. This becomes your default URL: yourslug.docs.outworx.io.
3. API Spec tab → Upload → drag in the JSON.

Your docs go live immediately. Every endpoint, every parameter, every example. The Try It playground works against your real API the moment it's uploaded — the same way Apidog's "Run" tab worked, but in the browser, with no desktop install and no per-seat tax.

Step 3 — Recreate your environments (2 minutes)

Apidog environments map to Outworx base URL overrides. For each environment in your Apidog project:

• Settings → Base URL in Outworx accepts a single override per project, or per-version if you've set up multiple versions
• The default base URL comes from the spec's servers[] entry
• Per-version overrides let you ship v1 against the staging server and v2 against production while developers test the migration

This is intentionally simpler than Apidog's environment switcher — most teams found Apidog's per-environment override matrix harder to reason about than per-version base URLs. If you really do need three+ environments per version, the pattern is one Outworx project per environment, all reading from the same source spec via auto-sync (Step 5).

Step 4 — Migrate your mocks (5 minutes)

This is the part that always sounds scary and turns out to be straightforward.

Apidog's "Cloud Mock" maps almost 1:1 to Outworx's hosted mock URL. Both ship a path-based mock the moment a spec is uploaded. The differences:

To migrate the mocks themselves:

1. The base mock URL on Outworx is docs.outworx.io/mock/<your-slug>/... — same path shape Apidog used.
2. Update your frontend / test code to point at the new host. Most teams put this behind an env var (process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_MOCK_BASE) so the swap is one config change.
3. If you had Apidog "Smart Mock" rules — pin them as Outworx stateful overrides in the dashboard. Match by method + path + optional query / headers / partial JSON body. The override editor is a side-by-side panel; you'll spend ~30 seconds per rule.
4. If you used Apidog's "Match Conditions" for response variants — that's the Outworx Prefer: example=<name> header pattern. Cleaner than Apidog's conditions panel because it lives in the request itself, not in mock-server config.

If you have ten or more mocks to migrate, use the Mock Override Import in Outworx — paste a JSON bundle (we accept Apidog's mock export format with one minor field rename, see the docs) and the rules get inserted one-by-one with merge or replace strategies.

Step 5 — Auto-sync from your spec source (2 minutes)

Apidog stores the spec as a project file inside its app. Outworx supports auto-sync from a public URL. If your spec lives in:

• A public GitHub repo (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/.../openapi.json)
• An S3 / R2 bucket
• A CDN URL emitted by your CI

…paste it into Settings → Auto-sync and pick a cadence (hourly, daily, weekly). Outworx re-fetches and re-parses on schedule; your hosted docs always match what's live.

For private specs, push from your CI on every merge to main. The companion guide Auto-sync OpenAPI Docs from GitHub Actions has a copy-paste workflow.

Step 6 — Migrate your custom domain (5 minutes)

If your Apidog docs lived at docs.yourcompany.com, keep them there.

On Outworx Docs (Business plan, $19/mo flat — vs Apidog's per-seat Team plan):

1. Settings → Custom domain → enter docs.yourcompany.com
2. Copy the CNAME target

On your DNS provider:

1. Edit (don't delete) the existing CNAME pointing at Apidog
2. Change it to point at Outworx's target
3. Cloudflare specifically: set proxy to DNS only (grey cloud). Outworx provisions its own Let's Encrypt cert; Cloudflare's orange-cloud proxy double-encrypts and breaks things.

Wait 1–5 minutes for propagation. Outworx polls and auto-issues SSL the moment the CNAME resolves. Green "Verified" badge appears in the dashboard.

Step 7 — Keep your SEO with proper redirects (3 minutes)

Apidog's hosted docs paths typically look like /api-doc/<workspace>/<endpoint-id>. Outworx paths look like /endpoints/<operationId>. Google has indexed the old shape; if endpoint pages 404 after the switch, your hard-earned rankings disappear.

Two safe paths:

Option A — keep Apidog alive for 30 days. Run both in parallel. Add a Cloudflare Page Rule (or equivalent) redirecting old paths to new:

docs-old.yourcompany.com/api-doc/* → docs.yourcompany.com/endpoints/$1

After Google reindexes (~30 days), cancel the Apidog subscription.

Option B — accept a temporary dip. Skip redirects. Rankings recover in 4–8 weeks once Google sees Outworx serving canonical content. Cheaper, slightly more painful.

Most teams use Option A. The 30-day overlap is the cost of a clean migration; saving the seat fees usually covers the parallel month easily.

What you gain by leaving Apidog

• Flat pricing. $9 Pro for 10 projects + 3 collaborator seats. $19 Business for unlimited + 10 seats. No per-seat tax. A 10-engineer team pays $19/mo total instead of $90+/mo per seat.
• Browser-only. No desktop app to install on every machine, no auto-update prompts, no "open the desktop app to access this feature" friction. Open a tab, paste a spec URL, share the docs.
• Free hosted mock server on every plan. Apidog gates Cloud Mock behind paid plans. Outworx's mock server is on Free, with stateful overrides, dynamic templating, and chaos mode all included.
• Per-project MCP server. Plug your API directly into Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, or Continue. Apidog has no equivalent — its AI features are stuck inside the desktop client.
• Real GraphQL execution. Outworx's mock server executes GraphQL queries against your SDL — selection-set aware, with realistic samples. Apidog's GraphQL support is REST-shaped and doesn't run real queries.
• Pricing honesty. $9 / $19. No "Contact Sales" enterprise gating, no annual-only discount tier.

What you give up

To be honest about it — Apidog has a few features Outworx does not:

• Postman-style request collections with full env-var management. Outworx's Try It is per-endpoint; if you need a multi-step "run this collection in order" UX, keep a Postman collection for those flows.
• Built-in load testing. Apidog has a basic load tester. Outworx's chaos mode is a per-request latency / error simulator, not a load generator. Use k6 or Artillery if load testing is mission-critical.
• API design / linting GUI. Apidog has a visual editor for the spec itself. Outworx treats the spec as source of truth and assumes you edit it in code. If you do all your spec editing in a GUI, this is a workflow change.

For most teams these aren't dealbreakers — they're using Apidog 90% for hosted docs + mocks, and the missing 10% is well-served by best-of-breed tools.

After the migration

Wire up auto-sync so the docs stay in lockstep with your repo. Either:

• Paste your spec URL into the project settings — we fetch on hourly / daily / weekly cadence
• Or push from CI: see Auto-sync API Docs from GitHub Actions

Then connect your AI assistant via MCP: Connect Claude Desktop to Your API Docs via MCP.

That's the full migration. Most teams finish in under thirty minutes. Save yourself the per-seat tax and the desktop install.

Start your migration →