head to head · open source
Insomnia vs higress
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. higress has 9,397 stars, 1,304 forks, 1,114 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 326% (40,021 vs 9,397 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; higress is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, higress 14%. 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 | higress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 higress if
- You want the higress feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and higress 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 higress
Higress is a cloud native, AI native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy that targets platform engineering and AI infrastructure teams who need to route LLM API traffic and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers through a single extensible, self hosted gateway.
read the full higress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or higress more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and higress has 9,397. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and higress free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and higress under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and higress?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and higress 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 higress?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose higress if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.