head to head · open source
Insomnia vs goa
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goa has 6,101 stars, 583 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 556% (40,021 vs 6,101 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; goa is written in Go under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, goa 10%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | goa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 583 |
| 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 goa if
- You want the goa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and goa 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 goa
Goa is a design first framework for building APIs and microservices in Go. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is distributed under the MIT license, with a repository that has been active for roughly twelve years and currently carries about 6,100 stars, 583 forks, and 38 open issues. Instead of writing transport and boilerplate code by hand, a developer expresses the intent of an API in a type safe domain specific language, and Goa generates the server interfaces, client packages, transport adapters, and documentation from that single design. The project describes itself as generating between 30 and 50 percent of a …
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or goa more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and goa has 6,101. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and goa free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and goa under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and goa?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and goa 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 goa?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose goa if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.