head to head · open source
Insomnia vs django-ninja
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. django-ninja has 9,229 stars, 624 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 335% (40,111 vs 9,229 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; django-ninja is written in Python under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, django-ninja 7%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (rest-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 | django-ninja | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 624 |
| 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 django-ninja if
- You want the django-ninja feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and django-ninja 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 django-ninja
^ Please read ^ Fast to learn, fast to code, fast to run Django Ninja Fast Django REST Framework Django Ninja is a web framework for building APIs with Django and Python 3.6+ type hints . Key features: Easy : Designed to be easy to use and intuitive. FAST execution : Very high performance thanks to Pydantic and async support . Fast to code : Type hints and automatic docs lets you focus only on business logic. Standards based : Based on the open standards for APIs: OpenAPI (previously known as Swagger) and JSON Schema . Django friendly : (obviously) has good integration with the Django core and ORM. Production…
read the full django-ninja overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or django-ninja more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and django-ninja has 9,229. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and django-ninja free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and django-ninja under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and django-ninja?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and django-ninja 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 django-ninja?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose django-ninja if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.