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Insomnia REST client now requires an account

180 points by mmillin 3y ago

RamblingCTO 3y ago
I thought about posting this half an hour ago but instead chose violence on their GitHub. Time to look into alternatives. I still can't comprehend this move. Seems Postman did well after they pulled this stunt so Kong does it as well.
nde 3y ago
Discussion going on in https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577. Unlikely to change anything, though. Time to look at alternatives.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
what alternatives exist? I literally just switched to insomnia due to postman doing this so I'm a bit stuck now. Do I go back to fiddler?
- dhpn 3y ago
  Not exactly the same, but I switched from Insomnia to Hurl. https://hurl.dev/ https://hurl.dev/
  - naikrovek 3y ago
    this is interesting, thank you
    - jicea 3y ago
      Thanks for mentioning Hurl [1] (maintainer here!) If you're looking for a tool with a nice UI, Hurl might not be the ideal choice. We're focusing our tool on CLI usage and CI/CD integration. On the other side, Hurl is a pure Open Source tool, we're not VC backed. The tool is given to the community by a big French telco, Orange, which use it and has no intention to be in the software business. In a word, there is less chance for Hurl to fell into Postman or Insomnia fate... [1]: https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev
- stonecharioteer 3y ago
  I ditched all these in favour of curl or xh a couple of years ago. Keep my recipes in shell scripts with documentation. Solves everything for me.
  - bdavisx 3y ago
    This makes it relatively easy to chain calls if necessary - call one api to get a authn token and then call another with the token you just got. I think that postman and insomnia can do that, but it's a breeze from the command line.
- pihug12 3y ago
  Bruno maybe? (https://www.usebruno.com/ https://www.usebruno.com/ && https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno)
  - oceanic 3y ago
    Just downloaded Bruno and it looks great! Thanks very much.
- nerdo 3y ago
  Thunder Client VS Code extension.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    Unfortunately I think they’re doing similar things with this extension. Last I checked, they locked some functionality behind a paywall that was formerly free and now they have several weird tiers of pricing with revenue limits and other bullshit. https://www.thunderclient.com/pricing https://www.thunderclient.com/pricing
- cwdegidio 3y ago
  Paw is always an option if you are on a Mac... I don't know if it available on PC
  - paradox460 3y ago
    They were bought by rapid API so there might be a Mac version now
    - jurassicfoxy 3y ago
      I was really disappointed with the Rapid API buyout, but anyway, the client for Mac seems essentially unchanged, is the good news. The weird thing is that I can find NO mention of the client on their site: https://rapidapi.com/products/build-apis/ https://rapidapi.com/products/build-apis/ Which, to me, is a bad sign. I suspect someday I'll be forced to give it up.
- Badumtss8 3y ago
  https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ https://recipeui.com/ https://recipeui.com/
- paradox460 3y ago
  I've been using LiveBook and doing my requests and such in there. If you're not an Elixir shop you could probably do something similar with jupyter
- splix 3y ago
  If you need gRPC, I can recommend https://kreya.app/ https://kreya.app/
- byyll 3y ago
  https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno, https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch, https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox If you want a more minimal solution/CLI https://github.com/httpie/cli https://github.com/httpie/cli and https://github.com/ducaale/xh https://github.com/ducaale/xh work
altairprime 3y ago
This is the first I’ve ever heard of Insomnia. Here’s missing context that a blog post about this could have included, to save everyone paging through yet another GitHub issue FP. Insomnia 8.0.0-rc1 was released today: https://insomnia.rest/changelog https://insomnia.rest/changelog The business that ships this codebase is migrating all instances from cloud-optional to cloud-required: > The challenge is that we cannot continue to offer a great product with all these capabilities while working on an abstraction layer that supports two different storage backends for all data in Insomnia, adds too much complexity to the whole product. Existing non-cloud users who wish to continue operating without the cloud will need to downgrade to 2023.5.8 to continue accessing their data: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases/tag/core%402023.5.8 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases/tag/core%402023.5.... HN user ‘RamblingCTO’ (see below) is the author of the GitHub issue.
- RamblingCTO 3y ago
  Even worse, before you could use it without an account. Now it locks you out of your data after the update. You need to create an account to get back your data.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - fosk 3y ago
    Here is a video that shows how to get access to your data without an account. https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?sid=df0baa8f-8916-4560-a8aa-6fe9ba21b0ec https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?...
    - RamblingCTO 3y ago
      How about a disclaimer that you're the one that caused this mess? You're the CTO of Kong ...
danfarrelly 3y ago
Our team has just started to use this a bit more and I really liked the .insomnia dir in our projects. This is pretty sad as we've seen this path with Postman - I ~~thought~~ hoped that since Kong had plenty of other viable revenue streams that Insomnia would stay out of this nonsense. Disappointing.
SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
It was a month or so that I heared of Insomnia, when we were looking for easier alternatives to Postman, which is much further down the VC-funded, "gotta monetise those users" trajectory. But they're trying to catch up, maybe?
heh 3y ago
That's amazingly terrible, I get the business case but this is the sort of thing you don't roll out in an automatic update....and you talk to your customers and stakeholders about first. Just wow.
stringtoint 3y ago
Curious to know what advantages Insomnia has/had over Postman beyond being MIT licensed. Postman's initial startup time could be a bit faster but other than this I'm not missing much (yet). I used it for years occasionally before finally creating an account not so long to sync my requests across devices. BTW: Jetbrains IDEs like WebStorm also have an integrated HTTP client.
- nokeya 3y ago
  Absence of all this bullshit about accounts, clouds and telemetry like in postman. It was just a tool to send requests I wanted when I wanted
- CrimsonRain 3y ago
  Ignoring everything else, postman UX is worse than anything I've ever used
  - nsonha 3y ago
    Postman and Insomnia have almost identical UIs
    - CrimsonRain 3y ago
      Yet I can find anything under a second in Insomnia and keep fumbling around on Postman for minutes.
  - andrewdryga 3y ago
    I see you haven't used Nero Burning ROM.
    - nsonha 3y ago
      Skeuomorphism had it time. I actually loved those apps back in those days.
joeyhage 3y ago
Restfox [1] has a similar UI to insomnia and works well. Not affiliated with Restfox [1] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox
- huy-nguyen 3y ago
  Thanks. I’ll check it out.
- commotionfever 3y ago
  +1 for restfox. moved from insomnia a few weeks ago. the UI could do with some polish but it's great other than that. plus it even has tabs, and can run in only a browser
- debok 3y ago
  Thanks. From playing around with many of the suggestions in this thread, this seems like the best option. It is lightweight and easy to use. Exactly why I was using Insomnia in the first place.
- pseudalopex 3y ago
  Restfox has analytics with no opt out currently for anyone who cares.[1] [1] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/issues/62 https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/issues/62
dochne 3y ago
My understanding is that Postman unfortunately pulled the same thing lately, so that's unfortunately a no-go for you. I've previously had good experiences with Paw (now RapidAPI) - https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/, but given that they are closed source and have started giving away the software rather than charging for it, I'm not filled with optimism they won't do a similar rug pull.
- huy-nguyen 3y ago
  I’ve actually tried Paw but I found it tricky because it doesn’t have a quick fuzzy search for existing API requests, which is something I use a lot in Insomnia.
quic5 3y ago
It’s still MIT licensed right? Seems like we need a Vscodium for Insomnia
- rezonant 3y ago
  Insomnium?
mead5432 3y ago
Thoughtworks Technology Radar has Insomnia as a "Trial" in the issue that came out today because of Postman pushing for more things to live on their servers. While not quite the same, still feels like awkward timing. https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/tools/summary/insomnia https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/tools/summary/insomnia *edited to add a link
- fmobus 3y ago
  former thoughtworker here: I know some of them are pissed, I hope the board responsible for the radar updates this fast
fosk 3y ago
Marco here, CTO at Kong (the parent company of Insomnia). You will see some of my replies in the GitHub issue where this conversation is taking place. I want to clarify a couple of things: 1) Insomnia can still be used locally in any version prior to this one. The data is there, and can be used. 2) Insomnia still has a local-only mode (Scratch Pad) that doesn't require any account, that anybody can use. A collection can be imported into Scratch Pad for API debugging purposes. 3) There is an onboarding step that clearly states what's going to happen and that allows the user to export the data. We also don't migrate any data until an account is created. 4) Data is not migrated in the cloud when collaborating with Git Sync, which is a capability that allows us to use Git as the source of truth. It is also not migrated without creating an account. 5) When migrating to the cloud, data is fully end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). That is the case for free accounts as well, not only premium plans. 6) Any organization that is serious about security can get in touch with Kong to pass the security compliance assessment and use the cloud like they most likely do with any other vendor. 7) We will even further improve clarity with a new minor version (8.1) that makes all of the above more clear (how to export/import etc). What's not seen in that conversation, is the large number of users that wanted a product that allowed them to collaborate better, without losing their data, and sync that data securely across multiple clients. Which is why we tried to strike a balance between convenience and feature-richness (cloud) but still provide a local option for other users (Scratch Pad). I can assure you that we didn't wake up one day and choose violence :) Ultimately, I am also perfectly aware that we can't make everybody happy.
- harryVic 3y ago
  Bro, why is the migrate step behind a signup? How is that not hostile to users? I will make sure my company never buys anything Kong. You have to know you are selling to devs.
  - fosk 3y ago
    The export is before the signup. Nothing gets migrated without a signup. But not making it easier to understand what was happening was an oversight, and we will make it more clear in v8.1 (as soon as this week). So 8.0 will be a 2-day release in this regard. You can also download any previous version of Insomnia and export from there. Without an account, the data never leaves your computer either way.
wackycat 3y ago
Literally just ruined my day. Needed to run one quick query that I had saved and opened insomnia to that stupid login screen and empty scratch pad. Even for folks who had automatic updates on, this should have come with some kind of warning. So poorly handled. Boo.
- Canada 3y ago
  That sucks. At least when Postman pushed this enshittification on its users it gave at least a couple of weeks warning before it happened.
addicted 3y ago
Lol we were literally working on approving Insomnia for company wide use to completely replace Postman only because it didn’t need an account. I guess we can kiss Insomnia goodbye as an option now.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Tell HN:
tornato7 3y ago
Another app that's trying to do too much. All I want is a basic GUI for curl with some organization and templating. I ditched Postman because they decided to go all enterprise subscription model on us, apparently I'll have to ditch Insomnia too. What a shame.
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  Yeah, postman isn't something I'm operating in all day like vscode or my terminal. It's something I open ocasionally when I need to test a few endpoints and iterate on them.
meekins 3y ago
This is very disappointing after migrating to Insomnia from Postman a couple of months ago. I did the migration even when my company provides Postman licenses for the employees because I don't need nor want the "collaboration" features, cloud sync (I have my backups covered, thanks) nor the telemetry. Can anyone recommend an open source API client that is content being just an API client?
- taskylizard 3y ago
  https://hoppscotch.io https://hoppscotch.io
Aeolun 3y ago
I just don't have the energy to find a new client and build up my collection again... How do I know that a random product won't sabotage my future use at some point in time? Do I really have to build everything myself to be safe?
- JambalayaJim 3y ago
  Gotta just use curl
  - jicea 3y ago
    You can use Hurl [1] an open source CLI tool based on plain text and libcurl! (I'm one of the maintainer) [1]: https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev
    - pseudalopex 3y ago
      Does it make any requests not directed by the user? Undisclosed telemetry is common in this space unfortunately.
      - jicea 3y ago
        No, you got what's you write. If you want, you can see the run curl's command, save it in a script and replay it without Hurl. You can check the source code here [1] [1]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl
        pseudalopex 3y ago
        Thank you!
- bakugo 3y ago
  Use something that doesn't auto-update and always works offline. Automatic updates are an anti-user "feature".
weinzierl 3y ago
Can someone please explain what the core issue is here? The Github issue says "needing an account" but the Kong CEO says below that "2) Insomnia still has a local-only mode (Scratch Pad) that doesn't require any account, that anybody can use. A collection can be imported into Scratch Pad for API debugging purposes." So, if I don't need or want any sharing and keep my collections in the file system, can I still use it without ever creating an account or not?
- jacobrussell 3y ago
  You can use scratch pad without creating an account, but any workspaces or collections you had saved in Insomnia can't be accessed without an account.
helloanoop 3y ago
Try Bruno - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno - Free and Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs - It is lightweight with MIT license - Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem - Use git for collaboration - No cloud sync. Fully offline. PS: I am the creator of this project
- fractalf 3y ago
  Awesome! I've spend 30 minutes searching for an alternative, but it's all crap. This looks really good! Simple light weight, we basically just need a simple gui over curl.. Thank you for this May I ask why .bru? I would really recommend using a standard format. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ etc..
  - helloanoop 3y ago
    checkout this github discussion: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/360 https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/360
- vladsanchez 3y ago
  Never knew of Bruno, but it's just what everyone wants and needs! Tired of Postman and Insomnia bloat. Code-generation would be a great feature. Good job!
- ReptileMan 3y ago
  Probably not a question you like to hear - but right now if I decide to jump from offline postman or insomnia - which will be the biggest pain points that I am to expect? Edit: And good luck, I have looked quite a bit for project like that.
  - helloanoop 3y ago
    Oauth2 flow is missing (which should be released by tomorrow), Otherwise you shouldn't encounter any pain points. The app has been in development over 2 years, and community (early adopters) has been using it for over year. It's fairly stable except the occasional blip. I built the tool for myself, I wanted my collections to co-exist alongside my backend code and be able to version it via git. So I ended up creating a human readable markup language to represent requests so that we can use git to version it. I hope you like it :)
hirstys 3y ago
https://hoppscotch.io https://hoppscotch.io is the way
adocomplete 3y ago
Yikes. That is terrible if true and a great way to kill your product.
ReptileMan 3y ago
So we are once again in the - please give alternatives. No clouds, no syncs, no other bullsit ... Postman is dead, insomnia seemed like good alternative.
- mfinelli 3y ago
  A while ago I built https://github.com/mfinelli/cui https://github.com/mfinelli/cui because I wanted something like postman that ran in my terminal. It's a little rough around the edges but it does the job for me
  - stratosgear 3y ago
    I have settled for Thunderclient vscode extension. Realy nice...
- jelling 3y ago
  REST Client extension in VSCode. Just a file that makes requests and lives in your repo. No totally unnecessary SaaS business with per user licensing fees.
- benabbottnz 3y ago
  https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch Self-hosted and open source.
- m0nhawk 3y ago
  I found that there are two possible answers: * good old tools - curl, Emacs plugins (restclient.el is pretty nice), Vim plugins; * and Postman/Insomnia alternatives - restfox.dev, hoppscotch.io and httpie.io (my personal preference so far) and I found this group to be the most volatile (I personally has moved from Postman to Insomnia).
salawat 3y ago
Had to laugh my ass off the first time I heard a Postman ad. I was like, are you serious? An API testing tool being marketed to people for production purposes? The moment they started cutting local state out of postman and pushing business customers to use their cloud offering, I was like, "Ah hah hah, nope".
cloverr20 3y ago
If you are using vim, you could try this one https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client. I have been using it for some time and it has worked well. Use in your local file system, integrates well with vim but I had to fork it since it didn't had a timeout setting.
relium 3y ago
This sucks beyond belief. The whole reason I moved to Insomnia from Postman was because Postman uploaded all of our APIs and credentials to their server without asking. I have clients that demand privacy - we can't even discuss the existence of their APIs outside the company.
- hpincket 3y ago
  Do you have any details on the equivalent Postman change? How long ago did Postman force users to create an account? I found this github issue, but I'm not sure if it's what everyone keeps referencing. https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/12114 https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/12...
lakomen 3y ago
[flagged]
markcollin 3y ago
Both popular alternatives - insomnia and Thunder client have pulled the rug Had to migrate away from Thunder client once they announced their pricing and stopping freemium. I have moved to bruno and its pretty refreshing to use a simple tool without the cloud bloat
capableweb 3y ago
AFAIK, there has been no official response so for all we know, this could be a bug, not intended behavior? Seems it has (accidentally) at least happen once before (https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5559 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5559) so probably worth switching to a different client regardless if this time was on purpose or not.
markcollin 3y ago
lol.. here we are again discussing postman alternatives.. this looks like a cycle open-source a tool build userbase VC funding rugpull repeat
markcollin 3y ago
lol.. here we are again discussing postman alternatives.. this looks like a cycle open-source a tool build userbase VC funding rugpull repeat
j_crick 3y ago
- Market yourself up as a Postman alternative - Work for some time - Do the same shit as Postman - ... - Profit? Really? I don’t know even. Why does it have to be the same story all the time? It’s become so tiring.
- magixx 3y ago
  Because recurring revenue vs no revenue or one time revenue is hard to pass up as a business. I do think cloud based sharing/features do have their place in a tool like this however.
  - rawfan 3y ago
    My company would happily pay for licenses. Not after this shit was pulled, though. They even went so far to remove the Kong enterprise api management products from our internal order system. It's not so great to work with a company that pulls the rug underneath you without warning. I also think these features have a place. I'm quite sad that Kong completely destroyed all trust our company had in them.
    - nabogh 3y ago
      Agree. I have no qualms paying for open source software if I think the owners treats their users well. I pay for Joplin Cloud but so far they haven't hidden all my data behind a forced signup screen (unless I jump through some export hoops just to end up in a worse user experience)
tomaszs 3y ago
According to the discussion and brief browsing of code changes I don't see any intention or proof it's for promoting the cloud solution. The title is not justified. The report was made 13h ago after beta versions released. There's no response yet. update : found response here: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577#issuecomment-1738131554 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577#issuecomment-17... I understand it's intentional
ushakov 3y ago
For automated testing, you should give Step CI (https://github.com/stepci/stepci https://github.com/stepci/stepci) a try Ps. I helped build it
fosk 3y ago
So. Much. Noise. An update on Insomnia 8.x here: * Insomnia can be used locally-only with Scratch Pad. * Insomnia can be used with an account without sharing any data using Git Sync (the data is in your Git repository, wherever that is hosted). * Insomnia can be used with an account and without Git Sync in a fully end-to-end encrypted way (E2EE). Nobody can read your data. * Insomnia stores your account information in Auth0, which is ISO27001, SOC 2 Type II, ISO27018, HIPAA BAA, Gold CSA STAR, PCI and GDPR compliant. * The data is not automatically migrated anywhere unless an account is created, as clearly explained in the onboarding that users have to approve in order to get access to the product. * Insomnia can be used for Free with an account. Unlike Postman, we are fully E2EE on every plan, local Scratch Pad is still there, Git is always an option when having an account. On top of this, we have shipped today 100s of features for real time collaboration, unlimited collaborators in the Free plan when working on one project, organizations, RBAC, EE SSO, multi-client support for everyone, and so on [1] Finally, here is a video that shows how to use Insomnia locally: https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?sid=df0baa8f-8916-4560-a8aa-6fe9ba21b0ec https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?... Trying to put some clarity in the noise. If you find any of these statements which is factually incorrect, please point them out. [1] - https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/insomnia-8-0 https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/insomnia-8-0
- LightFog 3y ago
  “So. Much. Noise.“ This comes across as very dismissive of your user’s concerns. Maybe worth giving your ego a break for a few hours and embracing empathy for your users.
  - fosk 3y ago
    It's not about ego, it's about clarity and overall sustainability of the product. Reality is that Insomnia offers plenty of ways to still run locally, but now it does it in a sustainable way that allows us to improve the product even more. I forgot to add that users can also create "Private Environments" which are always local and never synchronized with Insomnia Sync (in the cloud) or Git Sync.
adl 3y ago
Jetbrains has a pretty cool HTTP/REST client: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html The 'UI' (which is really an editor/syntax highlighting for the .http files) version I believe is a paid feature on the IDEs, but the CLI one I believe you don't need to pay to use it.
- monlockandkey 3y ago
  This is a good option. Wish there was a GUI but this works as well
mailund 3y ago
Thanks for the heads up, instant uninstall.
kjoh 3y ago
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malablaster 3y ago
Taking away my data until I register is really shameful and on principle I won't use this app anymore.
liyasthomas 3y ago
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uhaleks 3y ago
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- shumes 3y ago
  [dead]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fayalalebrun 3y ago
  It almost works on Linux with Wine. The text fields are messed up though. However, I do not know why you would use this considering the alternatives available. It is closed source, no GraphQL support, and has cloud "features". The only pro for me is low RAM use.
  - uhaleks 3y ago
    NativeRest is currently actively developing and GraphQL support will of course be added in the future. There will also be a version for Mac. Yes, cloud workspaces are supported, but if user doesn't create them or login, then no data will be sent to the servers.
harrytwigg 3y ago
I wasn't happy with the existing tools a whole ago, so I made my own called APITeam. It's similar to postman or insomnia but supports load testing out of the box
jayFellows 3y ago
Created a GitHub list of alternatives: https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternatives https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternati...

180 points by mmillin 3y ago

I thought about posting this half an hour ago but instead chose violence on their GitHub. Time to look into alternatives. I still can't comprehend this move. Seems Postman did well after they pulled this stunt so Kong does it as well.

nde 3y ago

Discussion going on in https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577. Unlikely to change anything, though. Time to look at alternatives.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

what alternatives exist? I literally just switched to insomnia due to postman doing this so I'm a bit stuck now. Do I go back to fiddler?

dhpn 3y ago
Not exactly the same, but I switched from Insomnia to Hurl. https://hurl.dev/ https://hurl.dev/
- naikrovek 3y ago
  this is interesting, thank you
  - jicea 3y ago
    Thanks for mentioning Hurl [1] (maintainer here!) If you're looking for a tool with a nice UI, Hurl might not be the ideal choice. We're focusing our tool on CLI usage and CI/CD integration. On the other side, Hurl is a pure Open Source tool, we're not VC backed. The tool is given to the community by a big French telco, Orange, which use it and has no intention to be in the software business. In a word, there is less chance for Hurl to fell into Postman or Insomnia fate... [1]: https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev
stonecharioteer 3y ago
I ditched all these in favour of curl or xh a couple of years ago. Keep my recipes in shell scripts with documentation. Solves everything for me.
- bdavisx 3y ago
  This makes it relatively easy to chain calls if necessary - call one api to get a authn token and then call another with the token you just got. I think that postman and insomnia can do that, but it's a breeze from the command line.
pihug12 3y ago
Bruno maybe? (https://www.usebruno.com/ https://www.usebruno.com/ && https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno)
- oceanic 3y ago
  Just downloaded Bruno and it looks great! Thanks very much.
nerdo 3y ago
Thunder Client VS Code extension.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  Unfortunately I think they’re doing similar things with this extension. Last I checked, they locked some functionality behind a paywall that was formerly free and now they have several weird tiers of pricing with revenue limits and other bullshit. https://www.thunderclient.com/pricing https://www.thunderclient.com/pricing
cwdegidio 3y ago
Paw is always an option if you are on a Mac... I don't know if it available on PC
- paradox460 3y ago
  They were bought by rapid API so there might be a Mac version now
  - jurassicfoxy 3y ago
    I was really disappointed with the Rapid API buyout, but anyway, the client for Mac seems essentially unchanged, is the good news. The weird thing is that I can find NO mention of the client on their site: https://rapidapi.com/products/build-apis/ https://rapidapi.com/products/build-apis/ Which, to me, is a bad sign. I suspect someday I'll be forced to give it up.
Badumtss8 3y ago
https://hoppscotch.io/ https://hoppscotch.io/ https://recipeui.com/ https://recipeui.com/
paradox460 3y ago
I've been using LiveBook and doing my requests and such in there. If you're not an Elixir shop you could probably do something similar with jupyter
splix 3y ago
If you need gRPC, I can recommend https://kreya.app/ https://kreya.app/
byyll 3y ago
https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno, https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch, https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox If you want a more minimal solution/CLI https://github.com/httpie/cli https://github.com/httpie/cli and https://github.com/ducaale/xh https://github.com/ducaale/xh work

altairprime 3y ago

This is the first I’ve ever heard of Insomnia. Here’s missing context that a blog post about this could have included, to save everyone paging through yet another GitHub issue FP. Insomnia 8.0.0-rc1 was released today: https://insomnia.rest/changelog https://insomnia.rest/changelog The business that ships this codebase is migrating all instances from cloud-optional to cloud-required: > The challenge is that we cannot continue to offer a great product with all these capabilities while working on an abstraction layer that supports two different storage backends for all data in Insomnia, adds too much complexity to the whole product. Existing non-cloud users who wish to continue operating without the cloud will need to downgrade to 2023.5.8 to continue accessing their data: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases/tag/core%402023.5.8 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/releases/tag/core%402023.5.... HN user ‘RamblingCTO’ (see below) is the author of the GitHub issue.

RamblingCTO 3y ago
Even worse, before you could use it without an account. Now it locks you out of your data after the update. You need to create an account to get back your data.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- fosk 3y ago
  Here is a video that shows how to get access to your data without an account. https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?sid=df0baa8f-8916-4560-a8aa-6fe9ba21b0ec https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?...
  - RamblingCTO 3y ago
    How about a disclaimer that you're the one that caused this mess? You're the CTO of Kong ...

danfarrelly 3y ago

Our team has just started to use this a bit more and I really liked the .insomnia dir in our projects. This is pretty sad as we've seen this path with Postman - I ~~thought~~ hoped that since Kong had plenty of other viable revenue streams that Insomnia would stay out of this nonsense. Disappointing.

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago

It was a month or so that I heared of Insomnia, when we were looking for easier alternatives to Postman, which is much further down the VC-funded, "gotta monetise those users" trajectory. But they're trying to catch up, maybe?

heh 3y ago

That's amazingly terrible, I get the business case but this is the sort of thing you don't roll out in an automatic update....and you talk to your customers and stakeholders about first. Just wow.

stringtoint 3y ago

Curious to know what advantages Insomnia has/had over Postman beyond being MIT licensed. Postman's initial startup time could be a bit faster but other than this I'm not missing much (yet). I used it for years occasionally before finally creating an account not so long to sync my requests across devices. BTW: Jetbrains IDEs like WebStorm also have an integrated HTTP client.

nokeya 3y ago
Absence of all this bullshit about accounts, clouds and telemetry like in postman. It was just a tool to send requests I wanted when I wanted
CrimsonRain 3y ago
Ignoring everything else, postman UX is worse than anything I've ever used
- nsonha 3y ago
  Postman and Insomnia have almost identical UIs
  - CrimsonRain 3y ago
    Yet I can find anything under a second in Insomnia and keep fumbling around on Postman for minutes.
- andrewdryga 3y ago
  I see you haven't used Nero Burning ROM.
  - nsonha 3y ago
    Skeuomorphism had it time. I actually loved those apps back in those days.

joeyhage 3y ago

Restfox [1] has a similar UI to insomnia and works well. Not affiliated with Restfox [1] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox

huy-nguyen 3y ago
Thanks. I’ll check it out.
commotionfever 3y ago
+1 for restfox. moved from insomnia a few weeks ago. the UI could do with some polish but it's great other than that. plus it even has tabs, and can run in only a browser
debok 3y ago
Thanks. From playing around with many of the suggestions in this thread, this seems like the best option. It is lightweight and easy to use. Exactly why I was using Insomnia in the first place.
pseudalopex 3y ago
Restfox has analytics with no opt out currently for anyone who cares.[1] [1] https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/issues/62 https://github.com/flawiddsouza/Restfox/issues/62

dochne 3y ago

My understanding is that Postman unfortunately pulled the same thing lately, so that's unfortunately a no-go for you. I've previously had good experiences with Paw (now RapidAPI) - https://paw.cloud/ https://paw.cloud/, but given that they are closed source and have started giving away the software rather than charging for it, I'm not filled with optimism they won't do a similar rug pull.

huy-nguyen 3y ago
I’ve actually tried Paw but I found it tricky because it doesn’t have a quick fuzzy search for existing API requests, which is something I use a lot in Insomnia.

quic5 3y ago

It’s still MIT licensed right? Seems like we need a Vscodium for Insomnia

rezonant 3y ago
Insomnium?

mead5432 3y ago

Thoughtworks Technology Radar has Insomnia as a "Trial" in the issue that came out today because of Postman pushing for more things to live on their servers. While not quite the same, still feels like awkward timing. https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/tools/summary/insomnia https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/tools/summary/insomnia *edited to add a link

fmobus 3y ago
former thoughtworker here: I know some of them are pissed, I hope the board responsible for the radar updates this fast

fosk 3y ago

Marco here, CTO at Kong (the parent company of Insomnia). You will see some of my replies in the GitHub issue where this conversation is taking place. I want to clarify a couple of things: 1) Insomnia can still be used locally in any version prior to this one. The data is there, and can be used. 2) Insomnia still has a local-only mode (Scratch Pad) that doesn't require any account, that anybody can use. A collection can be imported into Scratch Pad for API debugging purposes. 3) There is an onboarding step that clearly states what's going to happen and that allows the user to export the data. We also don't migrate any data until an account is created. 4) Data is not migrated in the cloud when collaborating with Git Sync, which is a capability that allows us to use Git as the source of truth. It is also not migrated without creating an account. 5) When migrating to the cloud, data is fully end-to-end encrypted (E2EE). That is the case for free accounts as well, not only premium plans. 6) Any organization that is serious about security can get in touch with Kong to pass the security compliance assessment and use the cloud like they most likely do with any other vendor. 7) We will even further improve clarity with a new minor version (8.1) that makes all of the above more clear (how to export/import etc). What's not seen in that conversation, is the large number of users that wanted a product that allowed them to collaborate better, without losing their data, and sync that data securely across multiple clients. Which is why we tried to strike a balance between convenience and feature-richness (cloud) but still provide a local option for other users (Scratch Pad). I can assure you that we didn't wake up one day and choose violence :) Ultimately, I am also perfectly aware that we can't make everybody happy.

harryVic 3y ago
Bro, why is the migrate step behind a signup? How is that not hostile to users? I will make sure my company never buys anything Kong. You have to know you are selling to devs.
- fosk 3y ago
  The export is before the signup. Nothing gets migrated without a signup. But not making it easier to understand what was happening was an oversight, and we will make it more clear in v8.1 (as soon as this week). So 8.0 will be a 2-day release in this regard. You can also download any previous version of Insomnia and export from there. Without an account, the data never leaves your computer either way.

wackycat 3y ago

Literally just ruined my day. Needed to run one quick query that I had saved and opened insomnia to that stupid login screen and empty scratch pad. Even for folks who had automatic updates on, this should have come with some kind of warning. So poorly handled. Boo.

Canada 3y ago
That sucks. At least when Postman pushed this enshittification on its users it gave at least a couple of weeks warning before it happened.

addicted 3y ago

Lol we were literally working on approving Insomnia for company wide use to completely replace Postman only because it didn’t need an account. I guess we can kiss Insomnia goodbye as an option now.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Tell HN:

tornato7 3y ago

Another app that's trying to do too much. All I want is a basic GUI for curl with some organization and templating. I ditched Postman because they decided to go all enterprise subscription model on us, apparently I'll have to ditch Insomnia too. What a shame.

shortrounddev2 3y ago
Yeah, postman isn't something I'm operating in all day like vscode or my terminal. It's something I open ocasionally when I need to test a few endpoints and iterate on them.

meekins 3y ago

This is very disappointing after migrating to Insomnia from Postman a couple of months ago. I did the migration even when my company provides Postman licenses for the employees because I don't need nor want the "collaboration" features, cloud sync (I have my backups covered, thanks) nor the telemetry. Can anyone recommend an open source API client that is content being just an API client?

taskylizard 3y ago
https://hoppscotch.io https://hoppscotch.io

Aeolun 3y ago

I just don't have the energy to find a new client and build up my collection again... How do I know that a random product won't sabotage my future use at some point in time? Do I really have to build everything myself to be safe?

JambalayaJim 3y ago
Gotta just use curl
- jicea 3y ago
  You can use Hurl [1] an open source CLI tool based on plain text and libcurl! (I'm one of the maintainer) [1]: https://hurl.dev https://hurl.dev
  - pseudalopex 3y ago
    Does it make any requests not directed by the user? Undisclosed telemetry is common in this space unfortunately.
    - jicea 3y ago
      No, you got what's you write. If you want, you can see the run curl's command, save it in a script and replay it without Hurl. You can check the source code here [1] [1]: https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl
      - pseudalopex 3y ago
        Thank you!
bakugo 3y ago
Use something that doesn't auto-update and always works offline. Automatic updates are an anti-user "feature".

weinzierl 3y ago

Can someone please explain what the core issue is here? The Github issue says "needing an account" but the Kong CEO says below that "2) Insomnia still has a local-only mode (Scratch Pad) that doesn't require any account, that anybody can use. A collection can be imported into Scratch Pad for API debugging purposes." So, if I don't need or want any sharing and keep my collections in the file system, can I still use it without ever creating an account or not?

jacobrussell 3y ago
You can use scratch pad without creating an account, but any workspaces or collections you had saved in Insomnia can't be accessed without an account.

helloanoop 3y ago

Try Bruno - https://github.com/usebruno/bruno https://github.com/usebruno/bruno - Free and Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs - It is lightweight with MIT license - Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem - Use git for collaboration - No cloud sync. Fully offline. PS: I am the creator of this project

fractalf 3y ago
Awesome! I've spend 30 minutes searching for an alternative, but it's all crap. This looks really good! Simple light weight, we basically just need a simple gui over curl.. Thank you for this May I ask why .bru? I would really recommend using a standard format. https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ etc..
- helloanoop 3y ago
  checkout this github discussion: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/360 https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/360
vladsanchez 3y ago
Never knew of Bruno, but it's just what everyone wants and needs! Tired of Postman and Insomnia bloat. Code-generation would be a great feature. Good job!
ReptileMan 3y ago
Probably not a question you like to hear - but right now if I decide to jump from offline postman or insomnia - which will be the biggest pain points that I am to expect? Edit: And good luck, I have looked quite a bit for project like that.
- helloanoop 3y ago
  Oauth2 flow is missing (which should be released by tomorrow), Otherwise you shouldn't encounter any pain points. The app has been in development over 2 years, and community (early adopters) has been using it for over year. It's fairly stable except the occasional blip. I built the tool for myself, I wanted my collections to co-exist alongside my backend code and be able to version it via git. So I ended up creating a human readable markup language to represent requests so that we can use git to version it. I hope you like it :)

hirstys 3y ago

https://hoppscotch.io https://hoppscotch.io is the way

adocomplete 3y ago

Yikes. That is terrible if true and a great way to kill your product.

ReptileMan 3y ago

So we are once again in the - please give alternatives. No clouds, no syncs, no other bullsit ... Postman is dead, insomnia seemed like good alternative.

mfinelli 3y ago
A while ago I built https://github.com/mfinelli/cui https://github.com/mfinelli/cui because I wanted something like postman that ran in my terminal. It's a little rough around the edges but it does the job for me
- stratosgear 3y ago
  I have settled for Thunderclient vscode extension. Realy nice...
jelling 3y ago
REST Client extension in VSCode. Just a file that makes requests and lives in your repo. No totally unnecessary SaaS business with per user licensing fees.
benabbottnz 3y ago
https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch https://github.com/hoppscotch/hoppscotch Self-hosted and open source.
m0nhawk 3y ago
I found that there are two possible answers: * good old tools - curl, Emacs plugins (restclient.el is pretty nice), Vim plugins; * and Postman/Insomnia alternatives - restfox.dev, hoppscotch.io and httpie.io (my personal preference so far) and I found this group to be the most volatile (I personally has moved from Postman to Insomnia).

salawat 3y ago

Had to laugh my ass off the first time I heard a Postman ad. I was like, are you serious? An API testing tool being marketed to people for production purposes? The moment they started cutting local state out of postman and pushing business customers to use their cloud offering, I was like, "Ah hah hah, nope".

cloverr20 3y ago

If you are using vim, you could try this one https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client https://github.com/aquach/vim-http-client. I have been using it for some time and it has worked well. Use in your local file system, integrates well with vim but I had to fork it since it didn't had a timeout setting.

relium 3y ago

This sucks beyond belief. The whole reason I moved to Insomnia from Postman was because Postman uploaded all of our APIs and credentials to their server without asking. I have clients that demand privacy - we can't even discuss the existence of their APIs outside the company.

hpincket 3y ago
Do you have any details on the equivalent Postman change? How long ago did Postman force users to create an account? I found this github issue, but I'm not sure if it's what everyone keeps referencing. https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/12114 https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/12...

lakomen 3y ago

[flagged]

markcollin 3y ago

Both popular alternatives - insomnia and Thunder client have pulled the rug Had to migrate away from Thunder client once they announced their pricing and stopping freemium. I have moved to bruno and its pretty refreshing to use a simple tool without the cloud bloat

capableweb 3y ago

AFAIK, there has been no official response so for all we know, this could be a bug, not intended behavior? Seems it has (accidentally) at least happen once before (https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5559 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/5559) so probably worth switching to a different client regardless if this time was on purpose or not.

markcollin 3y ago

lol.. here we are again discussing postman alternatives.. this looks like a cycle open-source a tool build userbase VC funding rugpull repeat

markcollin 3y ago

lol.. here we are again discussing postman alternatives.. this looks like a cycle open-source a tool build userbase VC funding rugpull repeat

j_crick 3y ago

- Market yourself up as a Postman alternative - Work for some time - Do the same shit as Postman - ... - Profit? Really? I don’t know even. Why does it have to be the same story all the time? It’s become so tiring.

magixx 3y ago
Because recurring revenue vs no revenue or one time revenue is hard to pass up as a business. I do think cloud based sharing/features do have their place in a tool like this however.
- rawfan 3y ago
  My company would happily pay for licenses. Not after this shit was pulled, though. They even went so far to remove the Kong enterprise api management products from our internal order system. It's not so great to work with a company that pulls the rug underneath you without warning. I also think these features have a place. I'm quite sad that Kong completely destroyed all trust our company had in them.
  - nabogh 3y ago
    Agree. I have no qualms paying for open source software if I think the owners treats their users well. I pay for Joplin Cloud but so far they haven't hidden all my data behind a forced signup screen (unless I jump through some export hoops just to end up in a worse user experience)

tomaszs 3y ago

According to the discussion and brief browsing of code changes I don't see any intention or proof it's for promoting the cloud solution. The title is not justified. The report was made 13h ago after beta versions released. There's no response yet. update : found response here: https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577#issuecomment-1738131554 https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/issues/6577#issuecomment-17... I understand it's intentional

ushakov 3y ago

For automated testing, you should give Step CI (https://github.com/stepci/stepci https://github.com/stepci/stepci) a try Ps. I helped build it

fosk 3y ago

So. Much. Noise. An update on Insomnia 8.x here: * Insomnia can be used locally-only with Scratch Pad. * Insomnia can be used with an account without sharing any data using Git Sync (the data is in your Git repository, wherever that is hosted). * Insomnia can be used with an account and without Git Sync in a fully end-to-end encrypted way (E2EE). Nobody can read your data. * Insomnia stores your account information in Auth0, which is ISO27001, SOC 2 Type II, ISO27018, HIPAA BAA, Gold CSA STAR, PCI and GDPR compliant. * The data is not automatically migrated anywhere unless an account is created, as clearly explained in the onboarding that users have to approve in order to get access to the product. * Insomnia can be used for Free with an account. Unlike Postman, we are fully E2EE on every plan, local Scratch Pad is still there, Git is always an option when having an account. On top of this, we have shipped today 100s of features for real time collaboration, unlimited collaborators in the Free plan when working on one project, organizations, RBAC, EE SSO, multi-client support for everyone, and so on [1] Finally, here is a video that shows how to use Insomnia locally: https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?sid=df0baa8f-8916-4560-a8aa-6fe9ba21b0ec https://www.loom.com/share/de7af6f9e06b4452a799a033604f9270?... Trying to put some clarity in the noise. If you find any of these statements which is factually incorrect, please point them out. [1] - https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/insomnia-8-0 https://konghq.com/blog/product-releases/insomnia-8-0

LightFog 3y ago
“So. Much. Noise.“ This comes across as very dismissive of your user’s concerns. Maybe worth giving your ego a break for a few hours and embracing empathy for your users.
- fosk 3y ago
  It's not about ego, it's about clarity and overall sustainability of the product. Reality is that Insomnia offers plenty of ways to still run locally, but now it does it in a sustainable way that allows us to improve the product even more. I forgot to add that users can also create "Private Environments" which are always local and never synchronized with Insomnia Sync (in the cloud) or Git Sync.

adl 3y ago

Jetbrains has a pretty cool HTTP/REST client: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-cli.html The 'UI' (which is really an editor/syntax highlighting for the .http files) version I believe is a paid feature on the IDEs, but the CLI one I believe you don't need to pay to use it.

monlockandkey 3y ago
This is a good option. Wish there was a GUI but this works as well

mailund 3y ago

Thanks for the heads up, instant uninstall.

kjoh 3y ago

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malablaster 3y ago

Taking away my data until I register is really shameful and on principle I won't use this app anymore.

liyasthomas 3y ago

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uhaleks 3y ago

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shumes 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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fayalalebrun 3y ago
It almost works on Linux with Wine. The text fields are messed up though. However, I do not know why you would use this considering the alternatives available. It is closed source, no GraphQL support, and has cloud "features". The only pro for me is low RAM use.
- uhaleks 3y ago
  NativeRest is currently actively developing and GraphQL support will of course be added in the future. There will also be a version for Mac. Yes, cloud workspaces are supported, but if user doesn't create them or login, then no data will be sent to the servers.

harrytwigg 3y ago

I wasn't happy with the existing tools a whole ago, so I made my own called APITeam. It's similar to postman or insomnia but supports load testing out of the box

jayFellows 3y ago

Created a GitHub list of alternatives: https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternatives https://github.com/stars/jaymakes11/lists/insomnia-alternati...