I stopped using Postman when it magically started connecting to a central server for… nothing useful, really. I have no idea why people would design software this way, especially a development tool that should work with any web server, under any network condition (including fully offline against localhost).
Now I just have a Makefile with a bunch of curl invocations, or Python tests with requests to match against expected responses.
show comments
jug
This could have been a 10 Megabyte TUI app in your terminal tab. Boggles my mind how even this kind of app manages to bring in Electron and the cloud.
RubyMine, and I assume its cousin JetBrains IDEs, has a great HTTP client (Tools -> HTTP Client) that I've used when I need this sort of functionality. I've been off of Postman for quite some time, since it got so complicated, and all I wanted was something to help me make simple web requests. (No disrespect intended to those who like Postman, it's just too overwhelming for my needs.)
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duxup
I think for the most part everyone has accepted that Postman grew into a monster that bloated with features and presumably that comes with online dependence.
show comments
gschier
This is exactly why I made Yaak [1]. It's fully offline, no telemetry, open source, and can even sync with Git.
Surprised to see no one's mentioned HTTPie yet. I reach out for their web app anytime I have to make a one off network request: https://httpie.io/app
paradox460
For a long time I used Paw, which became RapidAPI a couple years ago. Nice little app that does it's job well.
Lately I've just been using a Phoenix LiveBook notebook, with the Req package loaded into it. I can make requests, do arbitrary transforms on the data, and generally stay right at home in a language I like and understand
If you don't know elixir, I'm sure jupyter or some other notebook system would do just as nice of a job
pjio
Question: Do I miss something by not using Postman? My alternatives for development are "Edit and Resend" of a request (in Firefox) and plain old curl scripts for reusable examples.
Bruno + git has been perfect for our team. Collections in the repo, no external dependencies, works offline. Should have switched years ago.
jicea
If you're willing to use a CLI, you can try Hurl [1]. It's is an Open Source cli using libcurl to run and test HTTP requests with plain text.
We use libcurl for the reliability, quickness and top features (HTTP/3 IPv6 for instance) and there are features like:
- requests chaining,
- capturing and passing data from a response to another request,
There is nice syntax sugar for requesting REST/SOAP/GraphQL APIs but, at the core, it's just libcurl! You can export you files to curl commands for instance. (I'm one of the maintainers)
Posting (https://posting.sh/) is a pretty cool alternative I’ve used in the past. There’s no reason I can see why I would use a SaaS product for this.
ch_fr
I highly recommend checking out the postman forum for posts about the scratchpad being removed, it's a fascinating and frustrating read.
It would be so much faster and easier for the postman reps to just shut down the conversation. And yet, for some reason, they keep it going for very long while still being extremely evasive when it comes to any concern raised about data sovereignty.
unkn0wn_root
I don’t personally use Postman, but at work we use .http files, which are easy to version and manage with Git. The downside is that you’re almost entirely tied to VS Code and the REST Client extension. I’m not a big fan of VS Code myself (I use Vim), so if anyone interested, I created resterm [0] - a terminal client that works with .http or .rest files and adds some extra "nice-to-have" features. I’m currently working on adding OpenAPI spec importing.
I remember when one of the "Core Goals" of Postman was "Complete control over your data - Keep simple JSON based data formats which can be exported and shared as per user needs".
I'm looking at alternatives that are guarantee to work locally and only found the following:
Posting.sh -> Postman imports are experimental which makes it a non-starter for people like myself with large Postman collections. TUI only also makes it harder to switch.
Insomnia -> Owned by another large tech company.
Yaak -> Made by the same guy who created AND SOLD Insomnia above. Not exactly comforting to switch over for. How long till this one also gets sold?
Any other great local tools out there? I would like to be done with Postman.
al_borland
I moved from Postman to RapidAPI when Postman tried to get me to sign up for their cloud service just migrate my data to a new laptop.
CodesInChaos
I migrated to insomnia.rest when postman required logging in for basic functionality.
tedk-42
OK which dumb engineer unsafely wrapped the entire feature flagging / observability / telemetry tooling around the main process of the app such that it wouldn't load unless those libraries resolved?
pjmlp
It isn't working locally for quite some time now, hence why many companies have forbidden using Postman, given the issue of testing internal APIs with security information hosted on Postman servers.
p0w3n3d
The red flag appeared a few years ago already. My company forbade us to use it. This wan no problem for me, because I mostly use curl, but people got upset. We thought this too much restrictive, but ...
SamInTheShell
This makes me feel more justified in using Posting in my terminal these days.
naizarak
I'm using an old version of Postman with their servers blocked through the system hosts file. I keep meaning to migrate to whatever the next best thing is but this setup just works for me.
mondainx
It connects to their servers when it starts up; have to assume their server is down. It used to be so much nicer before they added this "feature".
[deleted]
mohsenmkh88
I built chapar for the same reasons. It’s an open source postman alternative, currently supporting rest and grpc and scripting with python.
I am against government regulation, but at times likes this (or your sous vide and washing machine requiring online accounts to function) the idea for regulations that mandate availability of local server for client server applications is alluring. And making all cloud functionality optional.
neya
I ditched Postman for Insomnia (Open source) after Postman refused to adhere to customers to disable auto-updates for 6 years+. I checked on their GitHub issue tracker and it turns out, the solution was to upgrade to their "Enterprise plan".
maybe it doesn't do everything postman does, but I'm very happy using the rest client extension in vs code, the http files with the api calls are commited to the source code repository along with the code is easy to use, does what i need, and is easy to share with my colleagues.
polynomial
But why does the app stop working if telemetry can't be sent? Who engineered this?
kristianp
How many other offline and online things failed unexpectedly due to the aws outage?
1vuio0pswjnm7
Despite the strength of marketing, "DIY" is sometimes more reliable than "pay fees to so-called "tech" company"" and subject oneself to possibility of telemetry, data collection, surveillance and targeted advertising. But every user is different
For recreational internet use, I use yy025 + TCP client + TLS proxy. No fees, no telemetry, no BS. I can select from a long list of TCP clients in this setup, e.g., original netcat, tcploop, tcpclient, socat, etc., as well as a variety of TLS proxies, e.g., tinyproxy+stunnel, haproxy, etc. I can modify the source of all the programs and can do more than is possible if using an "HTTP client", e.g., curl
Of course I am not testing "web apps" for a commercial enterprise. Nor do I use a so-called "modern", graphical browser. I retrieve data without a browser. Since I use HTTP every day in textmode it is "interesting"^1 to see software that somehow commercialises similar HTTP use, e.g., Postman, Burp, etc.
Bruno is quite good with postman compatibility and it's own syntax
digitalpacman
Postman is absolutely shit since it was sold. Stop using it.
waynesonfire
I switched to Insomnia, seems not as bloated for my use-case.
show comments
imiric
Just use cURL.
It will never disappear, enshittify, or let you down. It's already modern, and has a great UI. It's available everywhere. It supports every protocol and feature under the sun. Those fancy features you think you need: you don't. Whatever you're missing can be easily added via simple shell scripts or aliases.
i'm still using postman v9 from 2022, which is pre-bloat and good software.
[deleted]
K0IN
lately I really enjoyed using http files for sharing http example requests
tobinfekkes
Mine used to be all local too, but then it required me to login online in order to work.
But mine is still working locally now. If it stops working locally, what even is the point anymore?
stavros
In the beginning, there was Postman, and we used it, and it was good. Then, Postman became enshittified, so we switched to Insomnia. Then, Insomnia became enshittified, so we switched to Bruno. Then, Bruno became enshittified, so now it's Yaak.
Let's see how long it takes for one of these programs to break the cycle.
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bpiroman
just use curl
a85
Hello all,
Postman founder here. I did not time this with an AWS outage of this magnitude but I posted about filesystem, git, and offline support coming to Postman last week: https://x.com/a85/status/1978979495836356819?s=46
Postman has a lot of capabilities now that require the cloud but there is still an offline client built in just for requests.
Building sign-in and cloud features were not due to a VC-led conspiracy. A large number of companies depend on APIs (like AWS) and have thousands of services and APIs. Customers need to manage them and wanted us to build it.
Umm, just wondering why you never unplugged it from the internet for a few days(or forever)?
puppycodes
Yeah they really turned their product into over-complicated garbage instead of focusing on doing one thing well.
show comments
rubenvanwyk
[dead]
lotfi-mahiddine
[dead]
o1o1o1
Off-Topic: I read about yaak app as an alternative to Postman - can anyone recommend an alternative to Stoplight Studio for covering "the other side" by any means?
I loved to use their free desktop app for building API documentations which can be used for scaffolding / generating APIs but for some reason I don't remember right now I had to stop using it.
I stopped using Postman when it magically started connecting to a central server for… nothing useful, really. I have no idea why people would design software this way, especially a development tool that should work with any web server, under any network condition (including fully offline against localhost).
Now I just have a Makefile with a bunch of curl invocations, or Python tests with requests to match against expected responses.
This could have been a 10 Megabyte TUI app in your terminal tab. Boggles my mind how even this kind of app manages to bring in Electron and the cloud.
Edit: Ah, so here it is: https://posting.sh
Ah, yes, the cloud-dependent tool that forces you to pay per seat and log in for any type of collaboration is down when their cloud provider is.
Anyways, the folks have spoken, no need to double down. There are more than a dozen alternatives to it, and new ones are coming up.
I'm helping build a new one.
- Completely offline.
- Gives the ability to build reusable blocks (headers, query params, etc)
- Let's you document everything in Markdown.
- Imports your collections and cURLs.
https://voiden.md/
Depending on your usage, you may not need a separate app. Jetbrains[0], Visual Studio[1] and VSCode[2] have support for http files.
[0]: https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/http-client-in-product-c...
[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/aspnet/core/test/http-file...
[2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re...
RubyMine, and I assume its cousin JetBrains IDEs, has a great HTTP client (Tools -> HTTP Client) that I've used when I need this sort of functionality. I've been off of Postman for quite some time, since it got so complicated, and all I wanted was something to help me make simple web requests. (No disrespect intended to those who like Postman, it's just too overwhelming for my needs.)
I think for the most part everyone has accepted that Postman grew into a monster that bloated with features and presumably that comes with online dependence.
This is exactly why I made Yaak [1]. It's fully offline, no telemetry, open source, and can even sync with Git.
https://yaak.app
Surprised to see no one's mentioned HTTPie yet. I reach out for their web app anytime I have to make a one off network request: https://httpie.io/app
For a long time I used Paw, which became RapidAPI a couple years ago. Nice little app that does it's job well.
Lately I've just been using a Phoenix LiveBook notebook, with the Req package loaded into it. I can make requests, do arbitrary transforms on the data, and generally stay right at home in a language I like and understand
If you don't know elixir, I'm sure jupyter or some other notebook system would do just as nice of a job
Question: Do I miss something by not using Postman? My alternatives for development are "Edit and Resend" of a request (in Firefox) and plain old curl scripts for reusable examples.
https://www.usebruno.com/
I made a very simple lightweight yaml based Postman alternative called `yapi`.
https://github.com/jamierpond/yapi
Run this:
With this file: Or just `yapi` to use fzf to find configs.Bruno + git has been perfect for our team. Collections in the repo, no external dependencies, works offline. Should have switched years ago.
If you're willing to use a CLI, you can try Hurl [1]. It's is an Open Source cli using libcurl to run and test HTTP requests with plain text. We use libcurl for the reliability, quickness and top features (HTTP/3 IPv6 for instance) and there are features like:
- requests chaining,
- capturing and passing data from a response to another request,
- response tests (JSONPath, XPath, SSL certs, redirects etc...)
There is nice syntax sugar for requesting REST/SOAP/GraphQL APIs but, at the core, it's just libcurl! You can export you files to curl commands for instance. (I'm one of the maintainers)
[1]: https://hurl.dev
Apparently Postman needs to be online in order to send “telemetry”: https://anonymousdata.medium.com/postman-is-logging-all-your...
Posting (https://posting.sh/) is a pretty cool alternative I’ve used in the past. There’s no reason I can see why I would use a SaaS product for this.
I highly recommend checking out the postman forum for posts about the scratchpad being removed, it's a fascinating and frustrating read.
It would be so much faster and easier for the postman reps to just shut down the conversation. And yet, for some reason, they keep it going for very long while still being extremely evasive when it comes to any concern raised about data sovereignty.
I don’t personally use Postman, but at work we use .http files, which are easy to version and manage with Git. The downside is that you’re almost entirely tied to VS Code and the REST Client extension. I’m not a big fan of VS Code myself (I use Vim), so if anyone interested, I created resterm [0] - a terminal client that works with .http or .rest files and adds some extra "nice-to-have" features. I’m currently working on adding OpenAPI spec importing.
https://github.com/unkn0wn-root/resterm
We have moved all our stuff to Bruno nowadays.
I remember when one of the "Core Goals" of Postman was "Complete control over your data - Keep simple JSON based data formats which can be exported and shared as per user needs".
https://web.archive.org/web/20140604204111/http://www.getpos...
If you're on macOS, try Paw/RapidAPI https://paw.cloud They may be affected by AWS.
Stopped using postman from about 2018 I think. I think it was because I found it stupid to have to log-in to do API queries.
I didn't even find it that ergonomic to use, to be fair.
This is one of many reasons why I prefer curl[0] and a bit of shell scripting. With this approach there is no dependency on a vendor's servers.
0 - https://curl.se/docs/manpage.html
I'm looking at alternatives that are guarantee to work locally and only found the following:
Posting.sh -> Postman imports are experimental which makes it a non-starter for people like myself with large Postman collections. TUI only also makes it harder to switch.
Insomnia -> Owned by another large tech company.
Yaak -> Made by the same guy who created AND SOLD Insomnia above. Not exactly comforting to switch over for. How long till this one also gets sold?
Any other great local tools out there? I would like to be done with Postman.
I moved from Postman to RapidAPI when Postman tried to get me to sign up for their cloud service just migrate my data to a new laptop.
I migrated to insomnia.rest when postman required logging in for basic functionality.
OK which dumb engineer unsafely wrapped the entire feature flagging / observability / telemetry tooling around the main process of the app such that it wouldn't load unless those libraries resolved?
It isn't working locally for quite some time now, hence why many companies have forbidden using Postman, given the issue of testing internal APIs with security information hosted on Postman servers.
The red flag appeared a few years ago already. My company forbade us to use it. This wan no problem for me, because I mostly use curl, but people got upset. We thought this too much restrictive, but ...
This makes me feel more justified in using Posting in my terminal these days.
I'm using an old version of Postman with their servers blocked through the system hosts file. I keep meaning to migrate to whatever the next best thing is but this setup just works for me.
It connects to their servers when it starts up; have to assume their server is down. It used to be so much nicer before they added this "feature".
I built chapar for the same reasons. It’s an open source postman alternative, currently supporting rest and grpc and scripting with python.
Fully local and no hidden proxy. https://github.com/chapar-rest/chapar
Yeah I was pretty damn mad when I opened postman and it was completely unusable. Can safely say I'm done with it now.
Happy with https://yaak.app/so far
I am against government regulation, but at times likes this (or your sous vide and washing machine requiring online accounts to function) the idea for regulations that mandate availability of local server for client server applications is alluring. And making all cloud functionality optional.
I ditched Postman for Insomnia (Open source) after Postman refused to adhere to customers to disable auto-updates for 6 years+. I checked on their GitHub issue tracker and it turns out, the solution was to upgrade to their "Enterprise plan".
https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/69...
So, I said fuck it and switched to a real, open source alternative, Insomnia, instead:
https://insomnia.rest
I love Yaak. After using Postman for many years, I appreciate how straightforward it is without being bloated.
That being said, it would be awesome to have something inside Yaak where I could test API endpoints, like integration tests for APIs.
I feel bad for the engineering team that has to implement it all this way. Hang in there folks.
https://httpyac.github.io/guide/installation_vscode.html
I used to use Postman years ago; I never will again. These days I just use cURL and sometimes a rest client mode inside of whichever IDE I'm using.
Woah didn’t know it was down but I’ve been facing issues for a while so switched to Bruno by someone’s recommendation and it’s pretty tight
Someone should make a better one called Getman.
https://justuse.org/curl/
maybe it doesn't do everything postman does, but I'm very happy using the rest client extension in vs code, the http files with the api calls are commited to the source code repository along with the code is easy to use, does what i need, and is easy to share with my colleagues.
But why does the app stop working if telemetry can't be sent? Who engineered this?
How many other offline and online things failed unexpectedly due to the aws outage?
Despite the strength of marketing, "DIY" is sometimes more reliable than "pay fees to so-called "tech" company"" and subject oneself to possibility of telemetry, data collection, surveillance and targeted advertising. But every user is different
For recreational internet use, I use yy025 + TCP client + TLS proxy. No fees, no telemetry, no BS. I can select from a long list of TCP clients in this setup, e.g., original netcat, tcploop, tcpclient, socat, etc., as well as a variety of TLS proxies, e.g., tinyproxy+stunnel, haproxy, etc. I can modify the source of all the programs and can do more than is possible if using an "HTTP client", e.g., curl
Of course I am not testing "web apps" for a commercial enterprise. Nor do I use a so-called "modern", graphical browser. I retrieve data without a browser. Since I use HTTP every day in textmode it is "interesting"^1 to see software that somehow commercialises similar HTTP use, e.g., Postman, Burp, etc.
1. For example, https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/postman-valuation-2-bill...
Bruno is quite good with postman compatibility and it's own syntax
Postman is absolutely shit since it was sold. Stop using it.
I switched to Insomnia, seems not as bloated for my use-case.
Just use cURL.
It will never disappear, enshittify, or let you down. It's already modern, and has a great UI. It's available everywhere. It supports every protocol and feature under the sun. Those fancy features you think you need: you don't. Whatever you're missing can be easily added via simple shell scripts or aliases.
Stop using Postman and its ilk. Use .http files.
just use bruno+git https://www.usebruno.com/
I will phase out this tool, definely
i'm still using postman v9 from 2022, which is pre-bloat and good software.
lately I really enjoyed using http files for sharing http example requests
Mine used to be all local too, but then it required me to login online in order to work.
But mine is still working locally now. If it stops working locally, what even is the point anymore?
In the beginning, there was Postman, and we used it, and it was good. Then, Postman became enshittified, so we switched to Insomnia. Then, Insomnia became enshittified, so we switched to Bruno. Then, Bruno became enshittified, so now it's Yaak.
Let's see how long it takes for one of these programs to break the cycle.
just use curl
Hello all,
Postman founder here. I did not time this with an AWS outage of this magnitude but I posted about filesystem, git, and offline support coming to Postman last week: https://x.com/a85/status/1978979495836356819?s=46
Postman has a lot of capabilities now that require the cloud but there is still an offline client built in just for requests.
Building sign-in and cloud features were not due to a VC-led conspiracy. A large number of companies depend on APIs (like AWS) and have thousands of services and APIs. Customers need to manage them and wanted us to build it.
Thats why I self host Yaade https://docs.yaade.io (shameless plug lol)
restfox for the win
Umm, just wondering why you never unplugged it from the internet for a few days(or forever)?
Yeah they really turned their product into over-complicated garbage instead of focusing on doing one thing well.
[dead]
[dead]
Off-Topic: I read about yaak app as an alternative to Postman - can anyone recommend an alternative to Stoplight Studio for covering "the other side" by any means?
I loved to use their free desktop app for building API documentations which can be used for scaffolding / generating APIs but for some reason I don't remember right now I had to stop using it.