head to head · open source
Insomnia vs optillm
Insomnia has 40,023 GitHub stars, 2,367 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. optillm has 4,296 stars, 388 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Insomnia leads on adoption by 832% (40,023 vs 4,296 stars). Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; optillm is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Insomnia has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, optillm 9%. 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 | optillm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 388 |
| 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 optillm if
- You want the optillm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and optillm fits your workflow better
About Insomnia
Insomnia is an open source, cross platform API client built with Electron and TypeScript for developing and testing APIs across multiple protocols including REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, SSE, and gRPC. It runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license. The project serves as a direct open source alternative to Postman, offering similar core functionality without vendor lock in or mandatory cloud usage.
read the full Insomnia overview →
About optillm
OptiLLM is a Python project that provides an optimizing inference proxy for large language models. It exposes an OpenAI API compatible endpoint and sits between an application and model providers, allowing callers to request reasoning oriented optimizations without changing model weights or adding training. The project lives in the developer tools and API development ecosystem, and its topics connect it to agents, agentic workflows, API gateways, chain of thought prompting, and generative AI inference.
read the full optillm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Insomnia or optillm more popular?
Insomnia has 40,023 GitHub stars and optillm has 4,296. Insomnia has the larger community by that measure.
Are Insomnia and optillm free?
Both are open source. Insomnia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and optillm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Insomnia and optillm?
Insomnia is written in TypeScript and optillm in Python. 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 optillm?
Choose Insomnia if you want the larger community (40,023 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose optillm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.