head to head · open source
Insomnia vs grpc-gateway
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grpc-gateway has 20,012 stars, 2,415 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 100% (40,111 vs 20,012 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, grpc-gateway 12%. grpc-gateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (grpc, 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 | grpc-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 20K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 grpc-gateway if
- You want the grpc-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and grpc-gateway 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 grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway gRPC to JSON proxy generator following the gRPC HTTP spec About The gRPC Gateway is a plugin of the Google protocol buffers compiler protoc. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server which translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. This server is generated according to the google.api.http annotations in your service definitions. This helps you provide your APIs in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. Docs You can read our docs at: Testimonials We use the gRPC Gateway to serve millions of API requests per day, and have been since 2018 and through all of that…
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or grpc-gateway more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and grpc-gateway has 20,012. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and grpc-gateway free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and grpc-gateway under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and grpc-gateway?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and grpc-gateway 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 grpc-gateway?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose grpc-gateway if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.