head to head · open source
Insomnia vs bramble
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars, 2,366 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bramble has 511 stars, 56 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 7,732% (40,022 vs 511 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; bramble is written in Go under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, bramble 11%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | bramble | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 511 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 56 |
| 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 bramble if
- You want the bramble feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and bramble 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 bramble
Bramble is a production ready, MIT licensed federated GraphQL API gateway written in Go that aggregates multiple GraphQL services into a single endpoint for teams running federated GraphQL backends.
read the full bramble overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or bramble more popular?
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars and bramble has 511. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and bramble free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bramble under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and bramble?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and bramble 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 bramble?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,022 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bramble if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.