head to head · open source
Insomnia vs swag
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swag has 13,047 stars, 1,494 forks, 476 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 207% (40,111 vs 13,047 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; swag is written in Go under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, swag 11%. Insomnia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | swag | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 swag if
- You want the swag feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swag 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 swag
swag 🌍 English ∙ 简体中文 ∙ Português Swag converts Go annotations to Swagger Documentation 2.0. We've created a variety of plugins for popular Go web frameworks. This allows you to quickly integrate with an existing Go project (using Swagger UI). Contents Getting started Supported Web Frameworks How to use it with Gin The swag formatter Implementation Status Declarative Comments Format General API Info API Operation Security Examples Descriptions over multiple lines User defined structure with an array type Function scoped struct declaration Model composition in response Add request headers Add response headers…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or swag more popular?
Insomnia has 40,111 GitHub stars and swag has 13,047. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and swag free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and swag under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and swag?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and swag 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 swag?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,111 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose swag if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.