head to head · open source
Insomnia vs Hive
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hive has 483 stars, 146 forks, 260 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 8,186% (40,021 vs 483 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Hive is written in TypeScript under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Hive 30%. Hive was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (api, graphql), 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 | Hive | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 483 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 146 |
| 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 Hive if
- You want the Hive feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Hive 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 Hive
Hive (Hive Console) is an MIT licensed, open source schema registry and analytics platform for GraphQL federation and other GraphQL APIs, built by The Guild for teams that publish, guard, and observe GraphQL schemas — either on the managed Hive Cloud or on their own infrastructure.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or Hive more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and Hive has 483. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and Hive free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Hive under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and Hive?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and Hive in TypeScript. 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 Hive?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Hive if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.