head to head · open source
Insomnia vs pingoo
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars, 2,366 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped today. pingoo has 1,033 stars, 43 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 3,774% (40,022 vs 1,033 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; pingoo is written in Rust under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, pingoo 4%. Insomnia 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 | pingoo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-07-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 43 |
| 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 pingoo if
- You want the pingoo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and pingoo 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 pingoo
Pingoo The fast and secure Load Balancer / API Gateway / Reverse Proxy with built in service discovery, GeoIP, WAF, bot protection and much more Documentation Read the launch post Open Source load balancers and reverse proxies are stuck in the past century with a very slow pace of development and most of the important features reserved for "Enterprise Editions" which lead developers to use third party cloud services, exposing their users' traffic to legal, security and reliability risks. Pingoo is a modern Load Balancer / API Gateway / Reverse Proxy that run on your own servers and already have (or will have soon…
read the full pingoo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or pingoo more popular?
Insomnia has 40,022 GitHub stars and pingoo has 1,033. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and pingoo free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pingoo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and pingoo?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and pingoo in Rust. 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 pingoo?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,022 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pingoo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.