head to head · open source
Insomnia vs api-firewall
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. api-firewall has 654 stars, 62 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 6,033% (40,111 vs 654 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; api-firewall is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, api-firewall 9%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (api), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Insomnia | api-firewall | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 654 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-04-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 62 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Insomnia if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick api-firewall if
- You want the api-firewall feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and api-firewall fits your workflow better
About Insomnia
Insomnia API Client Insomnia is an open source, cross platform API client for GraphQL, REST, WebSockets, Server Sent Events (SSE), gRPC and any other HTTP compatible protocol. With Insomnia you can: Debug APIs using the most popular protocols and formats. Design APIs using the native OpenAPI editor and visual preview. Test APIs using native test suites and collection runner. Mock APIs using a cloud or self hosted mocking server. Build CI/CD pipelines using the native Insomnia CLI for linting and testing. Collaborate with others using the many collaboration features. And more including the ability to use 3rd…
read the full Insomnia overview →
About api-firewall
Open Source API Firewall by Wallarm API Firewall is a high performance proxy with API request and response validation based on OpenAPI and GraphQL schemas. It is designed to protect REST and GraphQL API endpoints in cloud native environments. API Firewall provides API hardening with the use of a positive security model allowing calls that match a predefined API specification for requests and responses, while rejecting everything else. The key features of API Firewall are: Secure REST and GraphQL API endpoints by blocking malicious requests Stop API data breaches by blocking malformed API responses Discover…
read the full api-firewall overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or api-firewall more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and api-firewall has 654. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and api-firewall free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and api-firewall under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and api-firewall?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and api-firewall in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Insomnia or api-firewall?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose api-firewall if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.