head to head · open source
Insomnia vs portman
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portman has 685 stars, 63 forks, 56 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 5,756% (40,111 vs 685 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; portman is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, portman 9%. 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 | portman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 685 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 63 |
| 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 portman if
- You want the portman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and portman 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 portman
Portman 👨🏽🚀 Port OpenAPI Spec to Postman Collection, with contract & variation tests included! Portman leverages OpenAPI documents, with all its defined API request/response properties, to power your Postman collection. Let Portman do all the work and inject contract & variation tests with a minimum of configuration. Customize the Postman requests & variables with a wide range of options to assign & overwrite variables. [!IMPORTANT] Important Change: If you are using version 1.28.0 with a custom Postman config file specified by the postmanConfigFile flag, please ensure that the parametersResolution option is…
read the full portman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or portman more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and portman has 685. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and portman free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and portman under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and portman?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and portman in TypeScript. 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 portman?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose portman if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.