head to head · open source
Insomnia vs datamodel-code-generator
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars, 2,366 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped today. datamodel-code-generator has 4,019 stars, 460 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 896% (40,022 vs 4,019 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; datamodel-code-generator is written in Python under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, datamodel-code-generator 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 | datamodel-code-generator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 460 |
| 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 datamodel-code-generator if
- You want the datamodel-code-generator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and datamodel-code-generator 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 datamodel-code-generator
datamodel code generator 🚀 Generate Python data models from schema definitions in seconds. 📚 Documentation · 🧪 Playground · 💼 Lead maintainer available for work [!NOTE] Playground privacy: Generation runs locally in your browser with Pyodide. Your schema and options are not sent to a backend. Shared repro URLs encode them in the URL fragment ( state=... ), which browsers do not send to the server; the full URL can still be stored in your browser history or wherever you share it. ✨ What it does Pick any one of the supported inputs and pick the Python model style you want as output. input model path/to/file.py:…
read the full datamodel-code-generator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or datamodel-code-generator more popular?
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars and datamodel-code-generator has 4,019. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and datamodel-code-generator free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and datamodel-code-generator under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and datamodel-code-generator?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and datamodel-code-generator in Python. 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 datamodel-code-generator?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,022 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose datamodel-code-generator if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.