Why It Matters
Workbench has been the Swiss army knife of the Salesforce ecosystem for years. REST explorer, SOQL/SOSL queries, describe calls, bulk data operations, metadata retrieval and deployment — all in a browser with no installation.
While it’s no longer actively developed, the core functionality still works for most use cases. For architects, the REST explorer and describe tools remain the fastest way to test API calls or inspect org metadata without setting up anything locally.
Alternatives
- Salesforce Inspector Reloaded — browser extension, faster for quick checks
- Postman — more powerful for API testing
- Salesforce CLI — command-line alternative for metadata and data operations