Hurl

Hurl is a command-line tool that lets you run and test HTTP requests using simple plain-text files. Built on top of libcurl, it offers a readable, diff-friendly format for defining requests, assertions, and captures — making it ideal for automated API testing, continuous integration pipelines, and command-line workflows.

Unlike GUI-based API clients, Hurl stores tests as plain text that can be version-controlled, reviewed in pull requests, and executed anywhere without a graphical environment. It supports HTTP headers, query parameters, form data, multipart uploads, cookies, and can capture values from responses to chain requests together.

Hurl is well-suited for developers and DevOps engineers who prefer CLI-first workflows, want reproducible API tests as code, and need a lightweight alternative to heavy GUI clients or complex testing frameworks.