head to head · open source
Insomnia vs twitter
Insomnia has 40,069 GitHub stars, 2,386 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. twitter has 949 stars, 291 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 4,122% (40,069 vs 949 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; twitter is written in PHP under MIT. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, twitter 31%. 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-client), 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 | ||
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 949 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-10-21 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 291 |
| 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 twitter if
- You want the twitter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and twitter 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 twitter
X (formerly Twitter) for PHP Twitter API for Laravel 10.x, 11.x (and new versions as they are released). Also supports other frameworks via PHP DI (or feel free to add support for your framework via PR) You need to create an application and create your access token in the Application Management. Installation Laravel Configuration Just set the below environment variables in your .env . Advanced Laravel configuration Run php artisan vendor:publish provider="Atymic\Twitter\ServiceProvider\LaravelServiceProvider" Versions 3.x 3.x is the current major version, and is not backward compatible with 2.x. See the…
read the full twitter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or twitter more popular?
Insomnia has 40,069 GitHub stars and twitter has 949. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and twitter free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and twitter under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and twitter?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and twitter 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 twitter?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,069 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose twitter if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.