head to head · open source
Insomnia vs go-restful
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. go-restful has 5,114 stars, 676 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 684% (40,111 vs 5,114 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; go-restful is written in Go under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, go-restful 13%. 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 | go-restful | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 676 |
| 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 go-restful if
- You want the go-restful feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and go-restful 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 go-restful
go restful ========== package for building REST style Web Services using Google Go Code examples use v3 REST asks developers to use HTTP methods explicitly and in a way that's consistent with the protocol definition. This basic REST design principle establishes a one to one mapping between create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations and HTTP methods. According to this mapping: GET = Retrieve a representation of a resource POST = Create if you are sending content to the server to create a subordinate of the specified resource collection, using some server side algorithm. PUT = Create if you are sending the…
read the full go-restful overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or go-restful more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and go-restful has 5,114. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and go-restful free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and go-restful under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and go-restful?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and go-restful 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 go-restful?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose go-restful if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.