HTTPie vs Insomnia

Comparing two open source alternatives to Postman and Apidog and Paw and Thunder Client . Use the comparison below to decide which one fits your needs.

HTTPie

BSD-3-Clause license

Open-source command-line and desktop HTTP client with intuitive syntax, JSON support, and built-in auth — a developer-friendly Postman alternative.

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Insomnia

Apache-2.0

The open-source, cross-platform API client for GraphQL, REST, WebSockets, SSE and gRPC. With Cloud, Local and Git storage.

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Side-by-side comparison

	HTTPie	Insomnia
License	BSD-3-Clause license	Apache-2.0
Self-hostable	Yes	No
GitHub Stars	38,426	39,949
Forks	3,994	2,356
Open Issues	330	890
Last Commit	Dec 17, 2024	Aug 16, 2026
First Released	Feb 25, 2012	Apr 23, 2016
Categories	API Development & Testing Tools	API Development & Testing Tools
Tags	#API #api client #http client	#API #rest #http client #api client

GitHub stars over time

HTTPie38,426

Insomnia

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