Ask HN: Nice alternatives to Postman?

9 points by sebiw 2 years ago | 14 comments

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!

bencelaszlo 2 years ago |

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.

JLCarveth 2 years ago | |

I just started using this recently, I love it!

sebiw 2 years ago | |

Thanks!

cruano 2 years ago |

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...

tommymanstrom 2 years ago |

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

erwagasore 2 years ago |

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

sebiw 2 years ago | |

Will try it out. Thanks!

11001100 2 years ago |

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

noop_joe 2 years ago |

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.

speedylight 2 years ago |

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.

briHass 2 years ago | |

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)

skydhash 2 years ago |

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

jjice 2 years ago |

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

rozenmd 2 years ago |

Yaak, made by the original maker of Insomnia.