Skip to content

Ask HN: Nice alternatives to Postman?

9 pointssebiw14 comments
On HN

Hey HN,

I'm looking for alternatives to Postman. It's become too bloated in my opinion and I no longer enjoy using it. I'd like something minimal yet effective, preferably as a "native" macOS app but I might be fine with a functional and well-designed electron app.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Comments

Bruno is a FOSS alternative, it is an Electron app, but widely used already: https://www.usebruno.com/downloads

What I like about it that requests are defined in a simple markup language called "Bru" and stores as simple text files, you can easily throw them around.

I just started using this recently, I love it!

sebiwOP

Thanks!

This completely depends on your use-case, but I've personally found that the edit and re-send [1] features of Firefox are enough for my purposes most of the time.

[1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/networ...

Currently using Insomnium [1], a fork of Insomnia before the login demands. Most likely found it here at HN [2] and decided to try it out.

[1] https://github.com/ArchGPT/insomnium

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37708582

HTTPie is a good alternative. Check it out here https://httpie.io/

sebiwOP

Will try it out. Thanks!

Insomnia is a Postman alternative: https://insomnia.rest/

I like restclient. There's no UI, just .http files with a simple format for describing requests. there's a version for emacs and vscode that are mostly interoperable.

I would say use insomnia but it’s going down the same path as postman. There are some nice VSCode extensions that integrate a REST client directly into the editor.

Same. I use https://github.com/Huachao/vscode-restclient

If you need a little more control or automation, it can also generate scripts for cURL or PowerShell (and others) directly from the request. Organization is on you, but I prefer that over a heavyweight and opinionated tool like Postman.

The .http files can also be used in Jetbrains Rider (probably their other suites as well)

Enjoy it while it lasts: https://paw.cloud/. Really good.

Not native, but Thunder Client is a VS Code extension that I've found pretty handy.

Yaak, made by the original maker of Insomnia.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.