Comparison of API development environments: Postman vs Insomnia

postman_vs_insomnia_comparison.md

Postman vs Insomnia comparison

Postman | API Development Environment https://www.getpostman.com
Insomnia REST Client - https://insomnia.rest/

Features	Insomnia	Postman	Notes
Create and send HTTP requests	x	x
Authorization header helpers	x	x	Can create "Authorization" header for you for different authentication schemes: Basic, Digest, OAuth, Bearer Token, HAWK, AWS
Maintains responses history per request	x	-	Whereas Postman maintains history for sent requests, responses are not organized per request, just mixed together in a single long list. Not too useful.
Manages cookies like a web browser does	x	x	Stores cookies obtained from "Set-Cookie" response header and sends them back in subsequent requests on per-domain basis. You can also manage cookies manually
Use certificates for client authentication	x	x
Generate code snippets	x	x	Can generate code snippets to send HTTP requests in various languages: curl, NodeJS, C#, Python, Ruby, raw HTTP protocol
View raw HTTP traffic	x	0	Whereas both tools show and parse responses, it's hard to see the actual request being sent. Insomnia provides access to raw HTTP traffic log through UI. With Postman, it's much trickier, you need to have Postman DevTools Console opened when making request.
UI	xx	x	Insomnia has minimalistic, cute and simple UI. Postman UI is a bit overloaded and complicated for newcomer (maybe due to a bigger number of features).
Environment and variables	x	x	Both tools have a notion of variable, and environment as a container for variables, which can be overriden by more specific environment (e.g. dev/stage/prod overrides global environment)
Organization	x	x	Both tools have a notion of a workspace to isolate different projects. Postman organize requests in collections and folders, whereas Insomnia uses folders only
Request chaining	x	xxx	Both tools can pull response data of one request and feed it into the next request. But Postman is more powerful here. You can run all requests in a collection as a whole. You can write "before" and "after" request hooks in JavaScript with arbitrary logic. You can build simple sequential workflows consisting of several requests, that share some data with each other. You can have basic conditional logic. With Insomnia, you need to run requests one by one manually, and don't have a place to inject custom logic.
API testing. Run tests/assertions against responses	-	x	With Postman, you can write tests/assertions against responses. Collection acts an executable description of an API. You can run all requests in the collection as a whole, and see test run results. Has CLI interface to run collections (newman). Can be used to automate API testing and integrate it into CI/CD workflow.
API Documentation	-	PREMIUM	Postman can generate documentation, that includes request description (Markdown), examples, code snippets (in various languages). Each request can have several examples (pairs of request-response payloads). Examples can be used to refine API protocol at design phase to show how endpoint works under different conditions (200, 4xx responses)
Mock server endpoint	-	PREMIUM	Postman can create mock of a server endpoint, based on request examples. Useful after design phase finished, so you can have frontend and backend teams work in parallel.
Data sync	PREMIUM	x	Postman syncs your data for free, whereas with Insomnia it's out of free tier.
Team collaboration	PREMIUM	PREMIUM
Built-in HTTP sniffer	-	x	Postman has a built in HTTP proxy sniffer, although it's very limited. It captures only requests without responses. In fact, it's not a full-blown sniffer for inspectation purposes. Instead, you can use it to bootstrap your project from the captured real-world requests, instead of crafting them manually. Supports only HTTP traffic. For HTTPS traffic self-signed certificate is used, which triggers warning in browser. Does not work if website has HTTPS+HSTS, because in this case you cannot bypass security warning in a browser
Import and Export	x	x	Postman supports: RAML, WADL, Swagger, curl. Insomnia supports: Postman v2, HAR, Curl.
Other	-	-	Insomnia can craft GraphQL requests. Postman can craft SOAP requests.

Premium tier

Insomnia: $5-$8 per user/month. Includes: syncing, team collaboration.
Postman: $10 per user/month. Includesteam collaboration, API documentation, mock servers, API monitoring, integrations.

That is a "virtual" comparison. In fact, Postman simply does not work ....
If you use Proxy (in university) and / or virtual hosts (for example Laravel with Laragon) it is simply useless.

Insomnia works like a charm, first try when postam failed after days of try (online version, desktop version, try anything on hosts file, ENV variable ...). These guys are just jokers, bugs are reported since YEARS and stil does not work.

thanks for providing this great comparisons @samoshkin

Thanks for writing this, @samoshkin

Just what i was looking for, Thanks

Is it up to date?

Insomnia now have a API Designer as well! And the license pricing changed already for both Postman and Insomnia.

Overall what would be better for making simple HTTP requests?
insomnia or postman?

Overall what would be better for making simple HTTP requests?
insomnia or postman?

@Harshithpm

insomnia is much simpler to use

Overall what would be better for making simple HTTP requests?
insomnia or postman?

I would say httpie is simpler https://httpie.org

GET request:
http https://www.whatismybrowser.com

POST request with json body:
http post http://localhost < my-file.json

i can see that Covid19 is making people rethink their choices, (the post if from 2 years ago hihihi) . CURL is better 👍 💯

At the moment, Insomnia supports OpenAPI/Swagger imports.

what's the differences between X, XX, XXX, and O?

Postman does not do the Windows NTML properly.

@roeniss It seems like X = included , XX = extensively included and XXX = pretty much covers every possible interaction. O = it is possible but not promoted.

Thank you @Dogacel ! I wonder why it's such a notations btw.

If anyone's interested, this one seems to be a good article comparing Insomnia vs. Postman vs. Paw:
https://rapidapi.com/blog/insomnia-vs-postman-vs-paw/

Overall what would be better for making simple HTTP requests?
insomnia or postman?

I would say httpie is simpler https://httpie.org

GET request:
http https://www.whatismybrowser.com

POST request with json body:
http post http://localhost < my-file.json

I've checked this.. Can you use it for an api with say >= 100 endpoints?

I've checked this.. Can you use it for an api with say >= 100 endpoints?

Think of httpie as syntactic sugar for curl. There's no builtin way to manage multiple endpoints like insomnia or postman. You can script them like:

#!/bin/bash
function orders() {
  local customer=$1
  http get "$server/api/v1/orders?customer=$customer"
}

But at this point I think it would be better to use a more appropriate tool. For one off / simple http requests however, I find curl or httpie to be more than adequate.

If you use Proxy (in university) and / or virtual hosts (for example Laravel with Laragon) it is simply useless.

I've no issue using Postman with Laragon (?)

👍🏻

excellent gist! thanks for posting!

Scripting capabilities are the biggest reason, why I can't completely move to Insomnia. I still use it while developing, because it is simpler, but my money goes to Postman.

what's the differences between X, XX, XXX, and O?

This needs to be addressed, lmao.

how can a UI be cute?

Insomnia add this feature:
API testing. Run tests/assertions against responses

Overall what would be better for making simple HTTP requests? insomnia or postman?

Insomnia

Overall what would be better for making simple HTTP requests? insomnia or postman?

Agree

how can a UI be cute?

😄