head to head · open source
Insomnia vs api-platform
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. api-platform has 9,185 stars, 971 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 336% (40,021 vs 9,185 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; api-platform is written in PHP under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, api-platform 11%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (api, graphql), 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-platform | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 971 |
| 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-platform if
- You want the api-platform feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and api-platform fits your workflow better
About Insomnia
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.
read the full Insomnia overview →
About api-platform
API Platform is an MIT licensed, PHP based next generation web framework for building API first projects, aimed at backend and full stack teams that want to expose hypermedia REST and GraphQL APIs from plain PHP data models without leaving the Symfony and JavaScript ecosystems they already know.
read the full api-platform overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or api-platform more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and api-platform has 9,185. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and api-platform free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and api-platform under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and api-platform?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and api-platform in PHP. 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-platform?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose api-platform if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.