API test automation options for local, QA, and staging environments?

I’ve been trying to lock down an API testing setup that behaves the same across local development, QA, and staging, and I keep hitting the same wall. What passes locally breaks the moment the environment changes, usually from config drift, mismatched mock data, or auth behaving differently per environment.

So I wanted to open this up: what are people actually using to validate API behavior consistently across all three?

A few things I care about:

• Catching regressions before they reach staging, not after
• Reusing one test suite across environments without rewriting everything
• Realistic mocks so local tests reflect production traffic
• Something that slots into CI without a heavy maintenance burden

I came across a solid rundown of api automation testing tools that compares how different options handle mocking and test generation, which helped me narrow things down.

Curious what this community leans on. Do you standardize on one tool across every environment, or mix contract testing with end-to-end checks? And how do you keep mock data from going stale?