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Postman vs Insomnia: which API testing tool do you use?

Madza on June 30, 2020

API testing is a crucial part of web development, allowing us to pass a specific set of data (or not) to application and making sure the expected r...
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Liyas Thomas • Edited

If you're looking for an online tool, checkout: Hoppscotch.io, formerly Postwoman.

  • Used by 300k+ developers
  • 23k+ GitHub stars
  • 3,000+ daily users

We ❤️ open source: github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch

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Maniflames

I used postman before but was in need of a GUI that handles websockets as well and postwoman definitely saved the day.

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Martin Häusler

Insomnia all the way. Performance is quite good, I handle bulky JSONs in my daily work and Insomnia never breaks a sweat. UI/UX is decent too. Saved requests are managed nicely as well. Overall I've got no complaints with it and I see no reason to switch to another tool.

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sycured

On my laptop, I use Insomnia for local dev but for distributed team and easy sharing, I prefer a self-hosted Postwoman

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Chad Adams • Edited

I use Insomnia because personally I like the UI better. Also if I needed to pay for it, it’s a lot cheaper than Postman. I can also do everything in Insomnia that I can do in Postman.

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cristiancastrodc

I use Insomnia in a daily basis. I prefer its simplicity when it comes to import (copy/paste) CURL requests. But I also recognize that Postman is a great tool, slightly more advanced.
Also, REST Client extension in VS Code saves my day when I have to store my API calls for later.

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Vaishali Rastogi • Edited

Try HyperTest(), it is the best Postman alternative!

-No need to prepare and maintain test data
-Auto generates and updates test based on the network traffic
-Gives inter-service dependency graph to make the visualization easy

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Madza

Thanks a lot for the valuable addition! 👍💯

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Aleksandr Ukhanov

If you have a PC, try NativeRest. This is a 100% native REST API client without Electron for Windows. It starts fast, uses 100 times less RAM than Postman and less load CPU.

  • Working in offline mode
  • Unlimited local workspaces
  • Full-featured portable version
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Madza

Thanks a lot for sharing, mate! 👍💯

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Ruslan

You can also try ApiScout. It is currently in open beta phase. ApiScout is realy fast and performant tool for testing Rest APIs. It may have not so many features as Postman at the moment, but they are comming.

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Madza

Thanks for sharing ✨👍💯

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Avi Cohen

I would recommend getMizu.io and open source also available on GitHub
github.com/up9inc/mizu

A simple-yet-powerful API traffic viewer for Kubernetes enabling you to view all API communication between microservices to help your debug and troubleshoot regressions.

Think TCPDump and Wireshark re-invented for Kubernetes.

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Madza

Thanks for the input 🙏❤

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Wanda

Try Apidog, it is the best free Postman alternative!

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Madza

Thanks for the valuable addition! 👍💯

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Bob

I use Insomnia. Postman was great for along time but I feel the UI is more simple in Insomnia now. Postman felt bloated.

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Francisco Quintero 🇨🇴 • Edited

I use Postman and have used both. I kept using the first because it has request examples and documentation web page out of requests and examples.

All of these in the free tier (haven't needed yet upgrading)

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Itachi Uchiha

Which API testing tool do you prefer?

I use Insomnia. I like it. But almost all the examples prepared with Postman on the web.

Why?

You may know that the Postman was a browser extension for a while. It always wanted to upgrade. I hated that. I removed it and I installed Insomnia.

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Raymond Ottun

I recently switched to insomnia because of the graphql support, though I still find both app quite difficult to use.

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Vaishali Rastogi

Try hypertest.co to ease out the testing of your graphQL APIs.

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hkly

I used Postman for a long time until my co-worker recently introduced me to Insomnia, and honestly, I made the switch because Insomnia was "prettier" lol

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fagun

Hi, I am trying to use Insomnia for one of my project. I was previously using Postman and for authentication - I was using option "Inherit from Parent" in Postman (Basically, both auth_token and auth_secret were mentioned as environment variables). Now, I am not sure how to use auth while using Insomnia. I tried it by defining as env variables in Insomnia too but it shows me "Unauthorized" error. Could someone guide me here? Thanks

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ThisNoName

There's a default header plugin. If your token/secret is static, you can set it from there; If token come from another request, you can call the request from default header; If you have multiple providers, you can use another plugin to save token into a variable, then set authorization header to the variable.

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Dmitry

Since I switched to Insomnia – it was like a breath of fresh air. But I still dreaming about native app instead Electron.

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Rakesh KR

I prefer Postman for API testing due to its intuitive interface, extensive features, and strong community support. Its user-friendly design streamlines the testing process, and features like collections and test automation enhance efficiency.

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Kelvin Mai

I switched to insomnia for performance reasons

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Avi Cohen

I would recommend getMizu.io and open source also available on
GitHub: github.com/up9inc/mizu.

A simple-yet-powerful API traffic viewer for Kubernetes enabling you to view all API communication between microservices to help your debug and troubleshoot regressions.

Think TCPDump and Wireshark re-invented for Kubernetes.

Features
Simple and powerful CLI
Monitoring network traffic in real-time. Supported protocols:
HTTP/1.1 (REST, etc.)
HTTP/2 (gRPC)
AMQP (RabbitMQ, Apache Qpid, etc.)
Apache Kafka
Redis
Works with Kubernetes APIs. No installation or code instrumentation
Rich filtering

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Patricio Sanchez Alvial

I've read Mazda hahaha

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Madza

Hahah, you are not the only one, that's for sure 😂😂

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Ryan

I've been using Postman for a while now. Haven't heard of Insomnia until now. Going to give that one a shot and see how I like it.

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Mateusz Iwaniuk

I use postman. I am just used to using it and it's good enough tool for me :D

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Alexey Melezhik

Try out Tomty - it's super flexible and allows you to write test scenarios on many languages, including Bash.

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Paweł Kowalski • Edited

I use Insomnia. I found it cleaner long time ago and just stayed with it. Postman wanted some weird things from me, for a curl with gui, it felt bloated.

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Mahlombe III

I use postman. I used to like it more when it was lighter. But now it feels more bloated. I'm finding myself use the VS Code Rest client extension more and more these days