I tested Postman, Insomnia, Bruno, and Requestly head-to-head across real-world scenarios. By the end of this post, you'll know exactly which one fits your workflow and your team's size.
Each of these tools comes with trade-offs that only surface when you least expect them: right in the middle of critical development work.
These tools are constantly shipping new features, so if you haven't revisited your setup recently, you might be missing out on significant improvements.
For context, I'm Jan Hesters, CTO of ReactSquad. I manage a team of over 20 frontend and full-stack developers who work with complex REST and GraphQL APIs every single day. I spent weeks putting these tools through real-world scenarios, so you don't have to. Here's what I found.
To ensure a fair comparison, I used the following scenarios across all four tools:
With those criteria in mind, here’s a tool-by-tool rundown.
Bruno is a fully offline, open-source API client built around a plain-text markup language called Bru. Collections are stored as individual files in your project directory, making them easy to version with Git. There's no login required, no cloud dependency, and no vendor lock-in.
After launching, Bruno greets you with a minimal interface: a tree view of your Bru files on the left and request/response panes on the right. Creating a request is as simple as adding a `.bru` file with YAML-like syntax. Because everything is stored locally, you can use standard Git commands to commit changes and collaborate through pull requests (`commit`, `push`, `pull`, etc.). There's no login prompt and no telemetry collection.
When it comes to security, Bruno is offline-first and account-free by design. Collections are plain text `.bru` files in your project, so versioning, access control, and auditability ride on your existing Git workflows rather than a vendor cloud.
Bruno ships a first-class CLI for running any collection in your CI/CD runners. Run `bru run` against a collection, folder, or single request.
Because Bruno is relatively young, it lacks some advanced features. There's no built-in mocking or request interception, and collaboration happens entirely through Git. Scripts are written in JavaScript but are limited compared with Postman's sandbox. If you're comfortable with Git and want full control over your API definitions, though, Bruno is a joy to use.
Postman is the established leader in this space and bills itself as a full API development platform. The feature list is enormous: a visual client for REST/GraphQL/SOAP requests, mocked endpoints, monitoring, API documentation, and even AI agents. The free plan supports up to three users and 25 collection runs per month and includes the core API client and a visual workflow editor called Flows. More advanced plans add unlimited seat counts, mock server quotas, private API networks, and role-based access control.
Postman offers both a desktop app and a web client. I installed the desktop version and was immediately prompted to sign up. While you can skip account creation and use the lightweight API Client locally, you'll need an account for workspaces, sync, mocks, monitors, and collaboration. Once inside, the interface feels like an IDE: tabs, sidebars, and pop-up modals compete for attention. Importing a collection from a JSON file is straightforward, and the built-in code generation feature can export your requests to cURL or various languages. Postman's Postbot assistant (AI) can generate tests and documentation, but after 50 free actions per month you'll need to pay.
Postman takes a cloud-first but flexible approach to security, letting you work completely offline in its lightweight API Client so everything stays local until you sign in. Secrets can also remain on device via Postman Vault, which does not sync. If you opt into the cloud, data is encrypted in transit (TLS) and at rest (AES-256-GCM), and Enterprise plans add BYOK so encryption keys are customer managed.
If you need headless runs, Postman's Newman CLI lets you execute any Postman collection from the terminal and wire it into CI easily. Typical flow: newman run collection.json -e env.json, or fetch the latest collection via the Postman API and run it in your pipeline. Newman exits with proper status codes, supports rich reporters (JUnit, HTML), and advanced flags for timeouts, SSL, and data files. Postman also offers a separate Postman CLI if that fits your team better.
When you open Requestly for the first time, it's different from the other API clients. That's because Requestly nudges you into its mocking capabilities.
If Postman/Insomnia/Bruno feel like "API clients first, everything else second," Requestly flips that script: it leads with interception and mocking. On first run you're gently pushed to connect an app (e.g., a browser, an app running on your computer, or even an external device) because the core idea is to intercept & change traffic on the fly to unblock frontend work.
You've got to install both the browser extension and the desktop app of Requestly.
Requestly starts local and only goes cloud when you ask it to. Local Workspaces keep rules, collections, and environments on your device; Team Workspaces add sync for collaboration. The desktop proxy and much of the tooling are open source, and the company publishes SOC 2 Type II compliance for teams that need formal assurances.
If you want to integrate Requestly into your CI/CD pipeline, you have to understand that Requestly is rule-driven rather than a traditional “collection runner.” This means you can automate it in two useful ways:
Insomnia has long been the lean, developer-friendly alternative to Postman. In the past, it has been my go-to tool for API testing because I like that it only does a few things, but it does them well. After being acquired by Kong, it now offers a polished desktop client that supports REST, GraphQL, gRPC, and WebSockets. It remains fully open source with optional cloud sync and Git integration for team sharing.
Insomnia's installer is roughly 140 MB, and no account is required for local use. I downloaded the build from their site and was up and running in seconds. The UI is clean—a left pane for your requests and environments, a middle pane for request details, and tabs for response, headers, and timeline. Adding an environment variable is as simple as typing {{base_url}} and defining it in the environment editor. Insomnia also supports multi-protocol requests; creating a WebSocket request uses the same workflow as a REST call.
Insomnia leans into user choice for data storage: pick "Local Vault" to keep everything on device, "Git Sync" to version in your own repo, or "Cloud Sync" with end-to-end encryption. With E2EE, encryption happens client-side and the passphrase is never stored server-side, so losing it means the encrypted data cannot be recovered.
If you want to integrate Insomnia into your CI/CD pipeline, Insomnia’s Inso CLI can run collections and unit tests headlessly, lints OpenAPI, and generates docs.
When you make a decision, you should consider the total cost of ownership (TCO). Seats are only part of the bill. Budget for run quotas and add-ons (collection runs, AI, mocks and monitors), CI minutes and artifact storage, and any compliance needs like EU residency or BYOK that can push you into enterprise tiers. Local-first saves on vendor overages but shifts cost to process: backups for local workspaces, managing E2EE passphrases, and a bit of glue code to keep rule-driven mocks stable in CI. In short, hosted convenience costs money each month, Git-first costs you maintenance time, so do the math on runs per day, suite length, and mock volume for your team.
I'm looking into these tools from the perspective of a manager for frontend and fullstack React developers. The truth is, when it comes to just sending API requests and storing collections, they all do more or less the same and they all do it well.
But, after extensive testing, my choice for the ReactSquad team is Requestly. This decision, however, is highly dependent on our specific constraints and priorities.
The deciding factor was solving our most significant development bottleneck around API clients: waiting on the backend. Requestly’s seamless interception and mocking capabilities directly address this pain point in a way no other tool does as effectively. The ability for a developer to unblock themselves by modifying an in-flight API response - without code changes or complex setup - is a massive productivity booster.
In general, I wasn’t fully convinced by any of the CLI tools these apps provide. That might just be because of how our teams usually work with APIs. Most of our projects already use testing frameworks like Playwright or Vitest with Supertest, and we run API tests as part of our E2E or integration test suites.
That said, Requestly’s Chrome extension works inside Playwright, which means you could skip setting up MSW and mock requests using Requestly if you don’t need it elsewhere. And, if your project doesn’t have a proper testing setup in place, using something like Postman’s Newman or Requestly’s public API can be a quick and practical alternative.
Here is my recommended decision tree to help you choose:
[1]: https://www.postman.com/pricing/
[2]: https://insomnia.rest/pricing
[3]: https://www.usebruno.com/pricing
[4]: https://app.requestly.io/
[5]: https://requestly.com/pricing/
[6]: https://www.postman.com/product/what-is-postman/
[7]: https://learning.postman.com/docs/getting-started/introduction/
[8]: https://insomnia.rest/products/insomnia
[9]: https://docs.usebruno.com/
[10]: https://requestly.com/
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