The best Postman alternatives, compared honestly
On 1 March 2026 Postman's Free plan became single-user. Shared workspaces and collaboration now start at Team — $19/user/month — and existing free teams with more than one member were flipped to read-only. If that's why you're here, these seven tools are the ones that actually hold up, with the trade-offs stated plainly.
The best Postman alternative depends on what you actually lost:
- You want collections in git, no accounts → Bruno — MIT, plain-text
.brufiles, free CLI. - You want the closest thing to Postman → Insomnia.
- You want a free server for the whole team → Hoppscotch — MIT, self-host free.
- You want design + mock + docs in one → Apidog — free for up to 4 users.
- You only need requests in CI → Hurl or the Bruno CLI.
Why teams look elsewhere
What pushed teams off Postman in 2026
Postman is a genuinely capable platform and it invented this category. But the 2026 plan change removed the one thing small teams relied on, and it landed on top of a few older sore points.
Free is one user now
Since 1 March 2026 the Free plan allows a single member per team, and shared workspaces are excluded from both Free and Solo. Collaboration starts at Team, $19/user/month billed annually.
Existing free teams went read-only
Postman's own docs are blunt: when a Free plan team has multiple members, the team is put into a read-only state. One Admin keeps editor access; everyone else can look but not touch.
A second meter: AI credits
The new plans meter AI usage per credit on top of per-seat billing — 50/month on Free, 400 on Solo and Team, 800 pooled on Enterprise, with overages from $0.035 to $0.05 per credit.
Scratch Pad is gone
The fully offline Scratch Pad was removed in v10.18 and gets no further updates or security fixes. The lightweight API Client replaced it and does work signed-out — but sync and sharing don't.
A one-day recovery window on Free
Deleted a collection on the Free plan? You have 24 hours to restore it. Solo gets 30 days, Team and Enterprise 90. Export before you downgrade, not after.
Your API history isn't in your repo
Collections live in a vendor workspace, not next to the code they describe. That's fine until pricing changes — and it's the structural reason git-native clients keep winning converts.
The shortlist
7 Postman alternatives worth trying
Ranked for teams that just lost free collaboration, then for broader needs. Each pick gets one honest strength and one real weakness — there's no single winner, only the right fit.
MIT-licensed and offline by design. Collections are plain-text .bru files in your own repo, so they diff, review and version like code — and a teammate reading one costs nothing. Free CLI for CI. Weakness: the one-time Golden Edition licence was retired in Dec 2024 for Pro/Ultimate subscriptions, which some of the community read as familiar drift.
The most like-for-like swap: mature GUI, and a real choice of Local Vault, Cloud Sync or Git Sync storage. Weakness: the free tier caps Git Sync at 3 users, so the same team cliff exists — just further out. Kong's 2023 forced-account episode still colours trust, though they did reverse it.
MIT-licensed, ~80k stars, runs in the browser or as a desktop app — and the Self-Hosted Community Edition is free for commercial use, so a whole team can share one instance for the cost of a VPS. Weakness: SSO, OIDC and audit logs are Enterprise-only, and it's lighter on API design/governance.
The broadest scope here: OpenAPI design, mock server, tests and published docs in one tool, with Postman import — and free collaboration for up to 4 users, which is the direct answer to Postman's new cap. Weakness: closed source and cloud-first, so you're trading one vendor's terms for another's.
Built by Greg Schier, who created Insomnia in the first place — MIT-licensed, no VC, data on disk with git as the sync layer. REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, SSE and gRPC. Weakness: young project with a much smaller plugin ecosystem, and commercial use needs a licence — $79/year for an individual, $149/user/year for a business.
If your team already lives in a JetBrains IDE, .http files sit next to the code and get reviewed in the same pull request, and the standalone ijhttp CLI runs them in CI. Weakness: the good experience is inside the IDE — there's no shared GUI for teammates who aren't. (VS Code's REST Client fills the same niche there.)
Apache-2.0, written in Rust on top of libcurl and maintained by Orange. Plain-text .hurl files run requests, capture values and assert on headers and body — an excellent Newman replacement for pipelines and smoke tests. Weakness: not a GUI client at all, so it complements rather than replaces the desktop app.
Staying on Postman for now? Export your collections and environments first — on the Free plan the recovery window for a deleted collection is one day.
Side by side
Postman alternatives compared
Prices are per user / month billed annually, July 2026. "Offline" means you can send requests with no account and no network round-trip to a vendor. Postman's own row is first so you can see the trade-off directly.
| Tool | Free tier | Paid from | Open source | Offline / no account | Self-host | Imports Postman | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postman | 1 user | Solo $9 · Team $19 · Ent. $49 | ✗ | partial (lightweight client) | ✗ | — | The full API platform at scale |
| Bruno | ✓ core, unlimited users | Pro $6 · Ultimate $11 | ✓ MIT | ✓ | n/a — files in your git | ✓ | Git-native teams |
| Insomnia | ✓ (Git Sync ≤3 users) | Pro $12 · Ent. $45 | core Apache-2.0 | partial (Local Vault) | ✗ | ✓ | Closest like-for-like swap |
| Hoppscotch | ✓ cloud + free self-host | Org. ~$6 · Ent. custom | ✓ MIT | partial (desktop app) | ✓ Community Ed. | ✓ | A free shared team instance |
| Apidog | ✓ up to 4 users | Basic $9 · Pro $18 | ✗ | ✗ | Enterprise | ✓ | Design + mock + test + docs |
| Yaak | ✓ personal use | $79 / yr · Business $149 / yr | ✓ MIT | ✓ | n/a — files on disk | ✓ | Local-first individuals |
| JetBrains HTTP Client | ✓ with the IDE · free CLI | bundled | ✗ | ✓ | n/a — files in your repo | ✓ via convert | JetBrains shops |
| Hurl | ✓ fully free | — | ✓ Apache-2.0 | ✓ | n/a — a CLI binary | ✗ | API tests in pipelines |
Pricing models and free tiers change often — check each vendor for current terms. Compiled July 2026 from each vendor's official pricing and documentation pages.
Official pages: Postman · Bruno · Insomnia · Hoppscotch · Apidog · Yaak · JetBrains HTTP Client · Hurl
The maths
What the March 2026 change costs a small team
Postman's Team plan is $19/user/month billed annually. Here's the annual bill for teams that were previously collaborating on the free plan, next to what the same team pays on the shortlist's open-source picks.
| Team size | Postman Team | Insomnia Pro | Apidog | Bruno / Hoppscotch (core) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 people | $456 / yr | $288 / yr | $0 (free tier) | $0 |
| 3 people | $684 / yr | $432 / yr | $0 (free tier) | $0 |
| 5 people | $1,140 / yr | $720 / yr | $540 / yr (Basic) | $0 |
| 10 people | $2,280 / yr | $1,440 / yr | $1,080 / yr (Basic) | $0 |
List prices × 12 months, annual billing, before AI-credit overages and before any negotiated discount. Bruno and Hoppscotch are free at their open-source core; both sell paid tiers for teams that want the extras.
A fair call
When Postman is still the right choice
Switching has a cost too, and a client is not a platform. Postman remains the right answer for a real set of teams.
Postman is still right if…
- You need the platform, not just a client — API Catalog, governance, org-wide discovery across hundreds of APIs.
- Monitors, mock servers and the Postman API are already wired into how you ship. None of the shortlist replaces all three at once.
- You need enterprise governance: SSO/SCIM, audit trails and roles, which land at the $49 tier.
- You're one developer. Free is still genuinely free for a single user, and the lightweight client works signed-out.
Look elsewhere if…
- You're a 2–5 person team that just got flipped to read-only — Bruno or Apidog cost nothing at that size.
- You want API definitions reviewed in pull requests alongside the code — see Postman vs Bruno.
- You need to keep everything on your own infrastructure — Hoppscotch Self-Hosted is free and MIT.
- All you actually needed was Newman in CI — Hurl or the Bruno CLI do that with no seats at all.
Common questions
Postman alternatives — common questions
What changed in Postman's plans on 1 March 2026?
Postman moved to four plans — Free, Solo, Team and Enterprise — effective 1 March 2026. The Free plan now allows only one member per team, and shared workspaces and collaboration are excluded from both Free and Solo. Postman's own documentation is explicit: when a Free plan team has multiple members, the team is put into a read-only state — one Admin keeps editor access and everyone else becomes a read-only member. Collaboration now starts at Team, $19/user/month billed annually.
What is the best Postman alternative in 2026?
For most teams, Bruno: MIT-licensed, collections as plain-text .bru files in your own git repo, fully offline, free CLI for CI — and because collections live in git, a teammate reading them costs nothing. If you want the closest like-for-like replacement, Insomnia. For a free self-hosted instance for a whole team, Hoppscotch. For an all-in-one design/mock/test/docs platform with free collaboration up to 4 users, Apidog.
How much does Postman cost in 2026?
Billed annually: Free $0 (1 user, 50 AI credits/month), Solo $9/month (1 user, 400 credits), Team $19/user/month (unlimited users, 400 credits each), Enterprise $49/user/month (800 pooled credits). AI usage beyond the included credits bills per credit — $0.05 on Solo down to $0.035 on Enterprise. A three-person team that previously collaborated for free now pays roughly $684/year.
Is there a free open-source alternative to Postman?
Several. Bruno is MIT-licensed with a free CLI and plain-text collections on disk. Hoppscotch is MIT-licensed and its Self-Hosted Community Edition is free for personal and commercial use. Yaak, from Insomnia's original creator Greg Schier, is MIT and free for personal use (commercial from ~$79/year). Hurl is Apache-2.0, maintained by Orange, for plain-text HTTP tests in CI.
Can I use Postman offline without an account?
Partly, and it's worth being precise. The fully offline Scratch Pad was removed in v10.18 and is deprecated — no updates, no security fixes; v10.17 was the last version to support it. Its replacement, the lightweight Postman API Client, does let you send HTTP, WebSocket, gRPC and GraphQL requests without signing in. What you can't do signed-out is sync, share or collaborate. Bruno, Yaak and the JetBrains HTTP Client are offline by design.
Can I import my Postman collections into another tool?
Usually yes — Bruno, Insomnia, Hoppscotch, Apidog and Yaak all import Postman collection v2/v2.1 files with environments. What tends not to survive is heavy pre-request and test scripting written against Postman-specific APIs, plus monitors and mock servers, which have no direct equivalent in a plain client. Export collections and environments before you downgrade: on the Free plan the recovery window for a deleted collection is one day.
Bruno vs Insomnia — which should I pick?
Pick Bruno for plain-text collections reviewed in pull requests, no accounts, and no per-seat cost for reading a collection. Pick Insomnia for the closest feel to Postman, a more polished GUI, and a real choice of Local Vault, Cloud Sync or Git Sync. Note that Insomnia's free tier caps Git Sync projects at 3 users, so a growing team meets a paywall there too — Pro is $12/user/month. Full breakdowns: vs Bruno · vs Insomnia.
How do I run API tests in CI without Postman?
The Bruno CLI is free, ships on npm and as Docker images, and runs a collection straight from your repo. The JetBrains HTTP Client has a standalone ijhttp CLI for .http files (needs JDK 21+). Hurl runs plain-text .hurl files and is built on libcurl specifically for pipelines. All three exit non-zero on failure, so any CI system can gate a build on them.