head to head · open source
Insomnia vs scramble
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. scramble has 2,224 stars, 217 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 1,704% (40,111 vs 2,224 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; scramble is written in PHP under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, scramble 10%. 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 | scramble | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 217 |
| 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 scramble if
- You want the scramble feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and scramble 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 scramble
Scramble Scramble generates API documentation for Laravel project. Without requiring you to manually write PHPDoc annotations. Docs are generated in OpenAPI 3.1.0 format. Documentation You can find full documentation at scramble.dedoc.co. Introduction The main motto of the project is generating your API documentation without requiring you to annotate your code. This allows you to focus on code and avoid annotating every possible param/field as it may result in outdated documentation. By generating docs automatically from the code your API will always have up to date docs which you can trust. Installation You can…
read the full scramble overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or scramble more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and scramble has 2,224. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and scramble free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and scramble under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and scramble?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and scramble in PHP. 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 scramble?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose scramble if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.