replacing Postman
API development and testing platform — Postman pricing: $14-$49/user/month. Below: 3 free, self-hostable open source projects that cover the same ground, ranked by real GitHub adoption.
There are 3 open source Postman alternatives tracked on this registry, against Postman pricing of $14-$49/user/month. The most-adopted is Hoppscotch with 80,331 GitHub stars under MIT, written in TypeScript. Together the set has 167,374 stars across 2 languages and 2 licences. All 3 are free to self-host with no licence fee, and 3 of 3 received a commit in the last 90 days. 3 head-to-head Postman comparisons are available.
Hoppscotch is an open-source API development ecosystem that provides a full-featured client for designing, testing, and documenting APIs. It operates as a web-based application, desktop app, and CLI tool, supporting offline, on-premises, and cloud deployments. Built with TypeScript and licensed under MIT, it serves as a direct open-source alternative to proprietary tools like Postman and Insomnia.
MIT · TypeScript · Postman vs Hoppscotch →
Bruno is an API client written in JavaScript and released under the MIT licence, positioned by its maintainers as the open alternative to Postman. It lives in the API development and testing ecosystem, and it replaces the cloud-synced, account-bound API client with a local desktop application whose state is a directory of files. Collections are saved directly to the filesystem, and request information is stored in Bru, a plain text markup language. Because the collection is just files, any version control system can be used to track and share it; the README highlights Git specifically.
MIT · JavaScript · Postman vs Bruno →
Insomnia is an open-source, cross-platform API client built with Electron and TypeScript for developing and testing APIs across multiple protocols including REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, SSE, and gRPC. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux and is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license. The project serves as a direct open-source alternative to Postman, offering similar core functionality without vendor lock-in or mandatory cloud usage.
Apache-2.0 · TypeScript · Postman vs Insomnia →
Sleek, intuitive API development and testing platform
Lightweight, fast, and open-source API client for developers
Powerful API development and testing made effortless
last updated nightly · ranking method: github stars, live-tracked
Hoppscotch is the most-starred open source alternative to Postman in this registry, with 80,331 GitHub stars. 3 alternatives are compared here in total.
Yes. Every project listed on this page is open source and free to self-host — there is no licence fee. Some projects also sell a managed hosted version, but the self-hosted path costs nothing.
Compare licence terms, community size (stars), primary language and release activity. A fast-moving project with a compatible licence and an active maintainer base matters more than raw star count when you are committing to a migration.