head to head · open source
Insomnia vs kgateway
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kgateway has 5,688 stars, 810 forks, 231 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 604% (40,021 vs 5,688 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; kgateway is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, kgateway 14%. kgateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (grpc), 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 | kgateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 810 |
| 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 kgateway if
- You want the kgateway 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 kgateway 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 kgateway
kgateway is an Apache 2.0, Go based control plane that implements the Kubernetes Gateway API for Envoy, giving platform and API teams a cloud native API gateway for microservices, serverless functions and legacy backends across any cloud or environment.
read the full kgateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or kgateway more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and kgateway has 5,688. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and kgateway free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kgateway under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and kgateway?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and kgateway 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 kgateway?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kgateway if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.