head to head · open source
Insomnia vs ogen
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ogen has 2,151 stars, 196 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 1,765% (40,111 vs 2,151 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; ogen is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, ogen 9%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (api, rest-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 | ogen | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 196 |
| 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 ogen if
- You want the ogen 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 ogen 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 ogen
ogen OpenAPI v3 Code Generator for Go. Getting started Sample project Security policy Telegram group @ogen dev Install Usage or using container: Features No reflection or interface{} The json encoding is code generated, optimized and uses go faster/jx for speed and overcoming encoding/json limitations Validation is code generated according to spec Code generated static radix router No more boilerplate Structures are generated from OpenAPI v3 specification Arguments, headers, url queries are parsed according to specification into structures String formats like uuid , date , date time , uri are represented by go…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or ogen more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and ogen has 2,151. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and ogen free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ogen under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and ogen?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and ogen 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 ogen?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ogen if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.