head to head · open source
Insomnia vs octelium
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars, 2,365 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. octelium has 4,056 stars, 153 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 887% (40,021 vs 4,056 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; octelium is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, octelium 4%. 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 | octelium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 153 |
| 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 octelium if
- You want the octelium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and octelium 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 octelium
Octelium is a free and open source self hosted zero trust secure access platform written in Go under the AGPL 3.0 license. It can operate as a remote access VPN, a ZTNA platform, an ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel alternative, an API gateway, an AI or LLM gateway, a PaaS like deployment platform, a Kubernetes gateway or ingress, and a homelab infrastructure.
read the full octelium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or octelium more popular?
Insomnia has 40,021 GitHub stars and octelium has 4,056. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and octelium free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and octelium under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and octelium?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and octelium 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 octelium?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,021 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose octelium if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.