head to head · open source
Insomnia vs cypress-realworld-app
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cypress-realworld-app has 5,912 stars, 2,612 forks, 31 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 577% (40,021 vs 5,912 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; cypress-realworld-app is written in TypeScript under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, cypress-realworld-app 44%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | cypress-realworld-app | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 2.6K |
| 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 cypress-realworld-app if
- You want the cypress-realworld-app feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and cypress-realworld-app 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 cypress-realworld-app
Cypress Real World App is a full stack payment application built to demonstrate real world usage of Cypress testing methods, patterns, and workflows, intended for developers and test engineers who want to practise end to end, component, and API testing against something that behaves like a production application.
read the full cypress-realworld-app overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or cypress-realworld-app more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and cypress-realworld-app has 5,912. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and cypress-realworld-app free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and cypress-realworld-app under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and cypress-realworld-app?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and cypress-realworld-app in TypeScript. 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 cypress-realworld-app?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose cypress-realworld-app if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.