head to head · open source
Insomnia vs kiota
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kiota has 3,844 stars, 346 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 943% (40,111 vs 3,844 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; kiota is written in C# under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, kiota 9%. kiota was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | kiota | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 346 |
| 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 kiota if
- You want the kiota feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and kiota 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 kiota
Project Kiota is a command line tool for generating an API client to call any OpenAPI described API you are interested in. The goal is to eliminate the need to take a dependency on a different API SDK for every API that you need to call. Kiota API clients provide a strongly typed experience with all the features you expect from a high quality API SDK, but without having to learn a new library for every HTTP API. This library builds on top of the Microsoft.OpenAPI.NET library to ensure comprehensive support for APIs that use OpenAPI descriptions. One of the goals of the project is to provide the best code…
read the full kiota overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or kiota more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and kiota has 3,844. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and kiota free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kiota under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and kiota?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and kiota in C#. 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 kiota?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kiota if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.