head to head · open source
Insomnia vs ogen
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars, 2,366 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ogen has 2,139 stars, 185 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 1,771% (40,022 vs 2,139 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 | ★ 2.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 185 |
| 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 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 ogen
ogen is an Apache 2.0 licensed OpenAPI v3 code generator for Go that converts an OpenAPI v3 specification into statically typed Go server interfaces and client code, aimed at Go teams who would rather generate their HTTP API layer from a spec than hand write it.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or ogen more popular?
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars and ogen has 2,139. 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 (40,022 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.