head to head · open source
Insomnia vs grpc-gateway
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grpc-gateway has 20,001 stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 100% (40,021 vs 20,001 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%. Insomnia 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 | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| 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 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 grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway is a plugin for protoc , the Google protocol buffers compiler. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. The generated server follows the google.api.http annotations attached to those service definitions, so a single set of protobuf services can be exposed in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. It lives in the gRPC ecosystem, is written in Go, and is distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license.
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or grpc-gateway more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and grpc-gateway has 20,001. 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 (40,021 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.