Developer tools · Updated October 2026
Postman is an API client for building, testing, and documenting HTTP requests. If you would rather own your tools, here are 4 open source alternatives to Postman, ranked by GitHub stars. Each one is free to use under its license, and you can read, change, and often self-host the code.
The most popular is Hoppscotch with 80.7k stars, and the most recently updated is Insomnia, with a commit on Oct 21, 2026.
| Project | Stars | License | Language | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hoppscotch | 80.7k | MIT | TypeScript | Oct 20, 2026 |
 Bruno | 47.8k | MIT | JavaScript | Oct 19, 2026 |
 Insomnia | 40.1k | Apache-2.0 | TypeScript | Oct 21, 2026 |
 REST Client | 6.1k | MIT | TypeScript | Apr 23, 2026 |
by hoppscotch
Open-Source API Development Ecosystem • https://hoppscotch.io • Offline, On-Prem & Cloud • Web, Desktop & CLI • Open-Source Alternative to Postman, Insomnia
by usebruno
Opensource IDE For Exploring and Testing API's (lightweight alternative to Postman/Insomnia)
by Kong
The open-source, cross-platform API client for GraphQL, REST, WebSockets, SSE and gRPC. With Cloud, Local and Git storage.
by Huachao
REST Client Extension for Visual Studio Code
By GitHub stars, Hoppscotch is the most popular open source alternative to Postman right now, with 80.7k stars, followed by Bruno and Insomnia. The best fit depends on your setup, so compare their licenses, languages, and recent activity in the table above.
Yes. All 4 projects on this page are open source, so the software itself is free to use, study, and change. Some of them also sell a hosted version or paid support.
Insomnia (last commit Oct 21, 2026), Hoppscotch (last commit Oct 20, 2026), and Bruno (last commit Oct 19, 2026) have the most recent commits. Licenses on this list include MIT and Apache-2.0.
