head to head · open source
Insomnia vs platformatic
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. platformatic has 2,135 stars, 211 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia leads on adoption by 1,779% (40,111 vs 2,135 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; platformatic is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, platformatic 10%. platformatic 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 | platformatic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 211 |
| 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 platformatic if
- You want the platformatic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and platformatic 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 platformatic
Watt The Node.js Application Server Watt takes any Node.js application, written in any framework, and runs it as a worker thread so you can ship faster and scale smarter in any containerized environment. What problems was Watt built to solve? Speed and Stability at Scale When run as a single thread, Node.js fails to efficiently consume the CPU allocated to it, causing the event loop to become blocked during periods of heavy traffic, which leads to spikes in latency and crashes. Even worse, because that single thread is also responsible for all your key telemetry data, you lose critical observability when your…
read the full platformatic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or platformatic more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and platformatic has 2,135. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and platformatic free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and platformatic under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and platformatic?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and platformatic in JavaScript. 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 platformatic?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose platformatic if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.