head to head · open source
Insomnia vs django-ninja
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. django-ninja has 9,191 stars, 613 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 335% (40,021 vs 9,191 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 613 |
| 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 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 django-ninja
Django Ninja is a web framework for building APIs with Django and Python 3.6+ type hints. It lives in the Python ecosystem and the Django ecosystem specifically, and it is distributed under the MIT license. The framework is designed around type hints, Pydantic, and async support, and it generates API schemas from the open standards for APIs: OpenAPI (previously known as Swagger) and JSON Schema. A NinjaAPI instance is declared next to the existing Django url configuration and mounted as a normal URL pattern, so the project sits alongside Django rather than replacing any part of it.
read the full django-ninja overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or django-ninja more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and django-ninja has 9,191. 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 (40,021 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.