head to head · open source
Insomnia vs Krakend
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Krakend has 2,682 stars, 501 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 1,392% (40,021 vs 2,682 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Krakend is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Krakend 19%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | Krakend | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 Krakend if
- You want the Krakend 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 Krakend 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 Krakend
KrakenD Community Edition is the open source distribution of the KrakenD API Gateway, a high performance, stateless, declarative gateway written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the cloud native developer tooling ecosystem, alongside Kubernetes, Docker, and Go based backend services, and it is catalogued here under Developer Tools / API Development & Testing. The project is extensible and platform agnostic, and it runs both in cloud native environments and on self hosted on premises infrastructure.
read the full Krakend overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or Krakend more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and Krakend has 2,682. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and Krakend free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Krakend under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and Krakend?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and Krakend 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 Krakend?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Krakend if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.