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Postman alternatives, chosen by why you are leaving
Teams leave Postman for three reasons in 2026: the Free plan became single-user, collections live in a signed-in cloud workspace, and Newman is no longer maintained. Each reason points at a different replacement, so this compares six alternatives and Postman itself on pricing, storage, CI and migration.
- options
- 7
- dimensions
- 19
- checked
- October 2026
The short answer
Our recommendation
The best Postman alternative for most teams is Bruno: an MIT licensed, offline API client that stores collections as files in your repository, needs no account, has no seat limit and imports Postman collections with their common scripts translated. Its CLI writes JUnit reports in CI. If your reason for leaving is cost or the vendor cloud, start there.
The right replacement depends on why you are leaving. Teams leave Postman for three reasons in 2026. Since March 2026 the Free plan is limited to one user, so a shared workspace means Team seats at a list price of $19 per user a month, billed annually. Collections and environments live in a signed-in workspace, which some security reviews reject. And Newman, the open source runner most pipelines were built on, is no longer maintained and cannot run Postman 12 collections. For cost, look at Bruno, Hoppscotch or Insomnia. For data control, Bruno or Insomnia. For a regression suite that belongs in code, REST Assured for Java teams or Karate for testers who do not write Java. For SOAP estates, SoapUI.
Before you leave, check whether you still need to. Postman 12 stores collections as YAML in Git, the Postman CLI is free on every plan and runs a local collection without signing in, and one person on the Free plan pays nothing. If a single tester owns the collection, or the collection is shared with support and partners who will never clone a repository, staying is often the cheaper decision.
Side by side
19 dimensions that actually decide it
Download or copy the table if you are writing this up for a decision record.
Postman
The incumbent API platform: request client, cloud workspaces, mocks, monitors and a Git-native mode since version 12.
Proprietary; Free and Solo single-user, Team per user
Bruno
Offline-first open source client storing collections as YAML or .bru files in your repository. No account.
MIT and free; paid Pro and Ultimate per user
Insomnia
Kong’s open source client with local, encrypted cloud or Git storage per project, plus OpenAPI design and linting.
Apache 2.0 app; free Essentials, paid Pro and Enterprise
Hoppscotch
Browser-first open source client with desktop apps, a CLI and a self-hosted Community Edition.
MIT; free cloud plan, paid Business and Enterprise
REST Assured
Java library for API tests written as ordinary JUnit or TestNG code beside the service.
Apache 2.0, no paid edition
Karate
API test framework with a Gherkin-style language, so testers write code-reviewed suites without Java. Bundles mocks and Gatling.
MIT core; paid IDE plans and Enterprise
SoapUI
Desktop tool with the strongest WSDL and SOAP support of this group, plus REST, GraphQL and Groovy scripting.
EUPL and free; ReadyAPI is the paid edition
| Dimension | Postman | Bruno | Insomnia | Hoppscotch | REST Assured | Karate | SoapUI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is and where tests live | |||||||
Kind of tool Clients suit exploration and shared collections; frameworks suit large suites maintained as code. | API client and platform. | API client and CLI. | API client, design tool and CLI. | Web and desktop API client with a CLI. | Java test library. | Test framework with its own language. | Desktop functional testing tool. |
Where tests live Decides how changes are reviewed and who controls the data. | Cloud workspace, or v3 YAML in Git through Local View. | Plain files in your repository. | Local Vault, encrypted Cloud Sync or Git Sync, chosen per project. | Workspaces on hoppscotch.io or your self-hosted instance. | Java test classes in your repository. | .feature files in your repository. | One XML project file, which diffs poorly. |
Who can write tests | Anyone; JavaScript for scripted checks. | Anyone; declarative assertions or JavaScript. | Anyone; JavaScript for scripted checks. | Anyone; JavaScript for scripted checks. | Java or Kotlin developers. | Testers comfortable with HTTP and JSON; no Java needed. | Point-and-click testers, with Groovy for logic. |
Protocols | HTTP, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, Socket.IO, MQTT. | REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, SOAP. | REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, server-sent events. | REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, SSE, Socket.IO, MQTT. | HTTP with JSON and XML bodies. | HTTP, GraphQL, SOAP; Kafka, gRPC, WebSocket commercial. | SOAP with WS-Security, REST, GraphQL. |
| Accounts and data control | |||||||
Account needed for team use Contractors and restricted client networks make accounts a real obstacle. | Yes, a signed-in workspace and paid Team seats. | No. Collaboration is through your Git host. | Yes for Cloud and Git Sync collaboration. | Yes, on the cloud or your own instance. | No. | No. | No. |
Keeping data off vendor clouds Saved responses often contain production-like data. | Local View in Git, but workspaces remain the collaboration layer. | By design; nothing is sent to a vendor. | Local Vault or Git Sync, enforceable on Enterprise. | Self-host the Community Edition. | By design; it is a library. | By design; it runs in your build. | By design; a local desktop tool. |
Self-hosting a shared server | Not offered. | Not needed; Git is the server. | Self-hosted mocks; projects use Git or Kong’s cloud. | Community Edition free under MIT; Enterprise Edition paid. | Not applicable. | Not applicable. | Not applicable. |
| Automation and CI | |||||||
CI runner Newman’s retirement made this the question for most existing pipelines. | Postman CLI. Newman is no longer maintained. | bru run from npm, with an official GitHub Action. | Inso CLI, with a kong/inso Docker image. | hopp test, still in alpha, needing Node.js 22. | Maven or Gradle test run. | Maven, Gradle or the standalone CLI. | testrunner or the official Docker image. |
JUnit XML for CI dashboards Without it, results never reach the CI test tab. | For v2.1 collections only; not v3 YAML. | Yes, alongside JSON and HTML. | No. Console reporters and JSON output. | Yes, with --reporter-junit. | Yes, through the standard Surefire or Gradle reports. | Yes, opt-in since version 2. | Yes, JUnit-compatible XML with -j. |
Scaling to a large suite Script tabs stop scaling long before code does. | Scripts spread across requests; no real module system. | Files help review; scripts still per request and folder. | Bundled libraries help; scripts still per request. | Scripts per request; lighter tooling for large estates. | Ordinary code: service layers, refactoring, shared models. | Reusable features and JavaScript functions; parallel by default. | Groovy reuse possible; single-file projects resist merging. |
Mocks | Hosted mock servers on every plan. | Local mock server, in beta. | Cloud or self-hosted mocks with monthly allowances. | API mocking on Business and above. | None; pair with WireMock. | Built in, written in the same language. | Mock services generated from a WSDL. |
Scheduled monitoring | Hosted monitors: 1,000 requests a month free, 10,000 paid. | None hosted; schedule in CI. | None on the plans; schedule in CI. | None listed; schedule in CI. | None; schedule in CI. | None; schedule in CI. | None in the open source edition. |
| Pricing, 13 October 2026 | |||||||
Licence | Proprietary. | MIT. | Apache 2.0 application. | MIT. | Apache 2.0. | MIT core. | EUPL. |
Free for a team The reason most people search for alternatives this year. | No. Free and Solo are single-user. | Yes, any size, through Git. | Git Sync free for up to three users. | Self-hosted Community Edition; cloud Free is a personal workspace. | Yes. | Yes, for the core framework. | Yes. |
Paid list price per user a month Read from each vendor’s pricing page today. Annual billing unless noted. | Solo $9 (one user); Team $19; Enterprise quoted. | Pro $6; Ultimate $11. | Pro $12; Enterprise $45; billing period not stated beside the price. | Cloud Business $6; cloud Enterprise $11. | No paid tier. | IDE plans per user; Enterprise custom. | ReadyAPI quoted, not listed. |
How cost grows | Seats, then metered monitoring, AI credits and cloud performance runs. | Only if you want paid in-app features. | Seats beyond three Git Sync users, plus mock overages. | Seats on cloud; your own hosting if self-hosted. | Engineering time and CI minutes. | Engineering time; licences for async protocols. | ReadyAPI modules if you outgrow the open source edition. |
| Moving from Postman | |||||||
Imports Postman collections A cheap trial on real data beats any feature table. | Not applicable. | Yes, v2 and v2.1; bulk data dump on Ultimate. | Yes, JSON files or a full export ZIP. | Yes, collections and environments. | No. Requests are rewritten as Java tests. | Requests are rewritten as feature files. | Rebuild from WSDL or OpenAPI definitions instead. |
What happens to scripts | Not applicable. | Common pm calls translated; unsupported calls fail at runtime. | Most converted; insomnia.globals unsupported, postman.* interfaces fail. | Review imported scripts before trusting them. | Rewritten in Java with Hamcrest matchers. | Rewritten as match assertions. | Rewritten as assertions or Groovy. |
Main catch | Seat cost and v3 reporting gaps. | Version 4 secret changes; CLI Safe Mode blocks npm packages by default. | No JUnit from Inso; LiquidJS templates since version 13. | CLI in alpha. | Needs Java skills; GPath differs from JsonPath. | Java 21 required; async protocols are commercial. | Dated, heavy desktop app; slow release pace. |
A tick marks the option we would pick on that row alone. Rows without a tick are close enough that the choice should come from elsewhere in the table. Checked October 2026; tool releases move quickly, so verify anything you are about to spend money on.
Pick one
Which one fits your situation
Find the list that describes your team, not the tool with the longest feature table.
Choose Bruno if
- Seat cost is why you are leaving and the team collaborates through Git.
- Request data must not reach a vendor cloud.
- You want an import that translates common Postman scripts.
- CI needs JUnit XML from every run.
Choose Insomnia if
- You design APIs from OpenAPI and want linting next to the requests.
- Up to three people share collections and the budget is zero.
- You run Kong Gateway or Konnect.
Choose Hoppscotch if
- People want an API client in the browser with no install.
- You want a shared server you host yourself, free under MIT.
- You test MQTT, Socket.IO or server-sent events alongside REST.
Choose REST Assured if
- The suite belongs beside a Java or Kotlin service and should share its models.
- Collections have grown helper scripts that would be simpler as code.
- You want ordinary JUnit reports and refactoring in the IDE.
Choose Karate if
- You want API tests in code review but testers do not write Java.
- Mocks and load tests should reuse the same scenarios.
- Long JSON payloads need validating in one assertion.
Choose SoapUI if
- Most of your services are SOAP with large WSDLs.
- WS-Security and namespaced XPath assertions are daily work.
- You need generated mock services for providers that do not exist yet.
Choose Postman if
- One person owns the collection, so the Free plan covers it.
- Support, product or partners read and run the collection.
- Hosted monitors and mocks are in daily use.
What changes the answer
Conditions that reverse the recommendation
A recommendation with no stated limits is a guess. These are the situations where ours does not hold.
Your collection is shared outside engineering
Git-based tools serve engineers well and everyone else poorly. If support or partners use the collection, Postman or Hoppscotch workspaces do work that a repository cannot.
Your scripts depend on Postman packages
pm.require and Postman package libraries do not translate cleanly to any client. If they carry real logic, a move to REST Assured or Karate may cost less than porting scripts.
You need hosted monitoring
None of the alternatives here offers hosted scheduled runs. Replacing Postman monitors means building schedules, alerting and history in your CI.
The suite is already mostly SOAP
For WSDL-driven services, SoapUI saves more effort than any REST-first client, despite its age.
In detail
Where the differences actually bite
The dimensions from the table, with the reasoning that would not fit in a cell.
Why teams are leaving Postman in 2026
Pricing is the main trigger. Postman changed its plans in March 2026. Before that, a Free team could invite up to three users; now the Free plan is limited to one user and cannot create a team, Solo is a paid single-user plan, and Team replaced Basic as the entry point for shared workspaces. Legacy plans continue until renewal, which is why many teams are searching for alternatives only now.
The second trigger is the cloud. Collaboration in Postman runs through signed-in workspaces, and the offline Scratch Pad was removed from version 10.18, leaving a lightweight signed-out client that sends requests but does not hold collections or environments. Security reviews that reject vendor storage for request data push teams towards tools that keep files local.
The third is Newman. Postman’s documentation describes it as no longer maintained, limited to v2.1 JSON and unable to run collections created or updated in Postman 12. Every pipeline built on newman run has to move somewhere, and for some teams that is the moment to ask whether the suite should be a collection at all.
Postman pricing compared with the alternatives
Postman’s pricing page on 13 October 2026 listed Free at $0 for one user, Solo at $9 a month for one user, Team at $19 per user a month and Enterprise through sales, with paid prices shown for annual billing. Free includes the Collection Runner, the Postman CLI, mock servers, Native Git and 1,000 monitoring requests a month; paid plans include 10,000. Cloud performance testing is billed at $0.04 per virtual user hour on paid plans.
Bruno lists Pro at $6 and Ultimate at $11 per user a month, billed annually, with the open source edition free for any team. Hoppscotch’s cloud plans list Business at $6 and Enterprise at $11 per user a month, billed annually, with a free personal plan and a free self-hosted Community Edition. Insomnia lists Pro at $12 and Enterprise at $45 per user a month, with Essentials free; its page offers an annual discount without stating beside the figure which billing period it reflects.
REST Assured has no paid tier, Karate’s core is free with per user IDE plans and a custom Enterprise licence, and SoapUI is free under the EUPL with ReadyAPI quoted rather than listed. For a ten person team that only needs shared collections, the gap between Postman Team and a free tool is ten seats a year. Price your own head count, and include migration time.
Client or code: the bigger decision
Swapping Postman for another client keeps the same model: requests, environments and scripts attached to each request. That suits exploration and medium regression packs. It does not fix the problem that a collection with hundreds of requests and pages of copied helper code is hard to maintain in any client.
REST Assured and Karate change the model. Tests become code that is refactored, reviewed and built like the service. We run REST Assured on client work as the deep regression layer for JVM services, usually alongside Postman for exploration rather than instead of it. Karate offers the same code-reviewed model to testers who do not write Java, with mocks and Gatling reuse in the same tool.
A sensible 2026 pattern is to keep a client for exploration and sharing, whichever one fits your cost and storage rules, and move the regression suite that gates releases into code.
Before you commit
Mistakes teams make on this decision
Switching clients when the real problem is suite design
Copied scripts, unclear variable scopes and tests that depend on each other move with the import. Fix structure first, or the new tool inherits the mess.
Assuming every import is lossless
Bruno leaves unsupported pm calls in place to fail at runtime, Insomnia does not import mock servers, and nothing imports Postman monitors. Run the imported collection before deleting anything.
Forgetting the CI report
Inso writes no JUnit XML, and the Postman CLI writes it only for v2.1 collections. Check what your CI test tab reads before choosing a runner.
Committing secrets in file-based collections
Moving collections into Git moves environment files with them. Use secret variables, .env files excluded from Git or CI secrets passed with --env-var.
Choosing on price alone
A free tool that your support team cannot open, or a framework your testers cannot write, costs more in workarounds than the seats you saved.
Leaving Postman with a large collection estate?
QAble migrates API suites between clients and into code frameworks, including the CI wiring and the scripts importers leave behind.
API testing servicesSwitching cost
Planning the move
Export your Postman collections as v2.1 JSON and your environments before anything else, and keep those exports until the new setup has been green in CI for several weeks. They are the only fallback if the import misses something, and they still run in the Postman CLI with JUnit reports.
Import one collection that carries real risk, run it in the new tool, then run it in CI next to the existing Postman CLI job for a sprint and compare results. Differences usually come from variable scope and secrets rather than from the requests. Move the rest only when that collection has been stable, and retire collections nobody can explain rather than migrating them.
Questions
Questions people ask before choosing
What is the best free alternative to Postman?
Bruno, for most teams. The app and CLI are MIT licensed, need no account, have no seat limit and store collections as files in your repository, and the CLI writes JUnit reports. Hoppscotch is the best free browser-based option, with a self-hosted Community Edition under MIT. Insomnia is free for up to three users sharing through Git Sync.
How much does Postman cost in 2026?
On 13 October 2026 Postman’s pricing page listed Free at $0 for one user, Solo at $9 a month for one user and Team at $19 per user a month, with paid prices shown for annual billing, and Enterprise through sales. Paid plans add higher monitoring, AI and Postman API allowances; cloud performance testing is billed per virtual user hour.
Is Postman still free?
For one person, yes. The Free plan includes the request client, Collection Runner, Postman CLI, mock servers, Native Git and 1,000 monitoring requests a month. Since March 2026 it is limited to one user and cannot create a team, so any shared workspace needs the Team plan.
Is Newman being retired?
Postman’s documentation describes Newman as no longer maintained. It runs only v2.1 JSON collections and cannot run collections created or updated in Postman 12. The Postman CLI replaces it: postman collection run keeps the core flags such as -e, -g and -r. Alternatives have their own runners: bru run, inso, hopp test, or a Maven or Gradle build for REST Assured and Karate.
Which Postman alternative stores collections in Git?
Bruno stores everything as plain files in your repository with no account. Insomnia’s Git Sync writes projects as YAML in a standard .git folder, free for up to three users. Postman itself now does this too: Postman 12’s Local View writes per-request YAML files, so Git storage alone is no longer a reason to leave.
Should we replace Postman with a code framework?
For the regression suite that gates releases, often yes. REST Assured suits Java and Kotlin teams, and Karate suits testers who do not write Java. Keep a client for exploration and for sharing requests with people outside engineering. Most mature teams end up with both layers rather than one tool.
Can I use Postman and an alternative together?
Yes. A common split is Postman for exploration and for collections shared with support and partners, with Bruno or a code framework holding the regression suite in the repository. Keep one owner per collection so the copies do not drift, and import from Postman exports rather than maintaining requests twice by hand.
What is the best Postman alternative for SOAP?
SoapUI. It reads a WSDL, generates correct requests and mock services for every operation, handles WS-Security and asserts with XPath on namespaced XML. Postman can send SOAP as raw XML, which is fine for a few calls. Bruno also supports SOAP requests, but SoapUI saves the most effort on large enterprise schemas.
How we compared
How this comparison was put together
Two of these tools are part of our daily work: we run Postman and REST Assured on client work, Postman for exploration and shared collections and REST Assured for code-based regression suites on JVM services. Bruno, Insomnia, Hoppscotch, Karate and SoapUI we have evaluated by importing real collections, running their CLIs in CI and reading their documentation and release notes, not by maintaining long-running client suites on them.
List prices are quoted only where we read them on the vendor’s own pricing page on 13 October 2026, and they are list prices, not quotes. Postman, Insomnia and Hoppscotch all show annual and monthly billing options, so check the period before you budget. Where a vendor quotes rather than lists, we describe the model instead.
Versions and behaviours were checked on the same date against each project’s documentation and repository. Several of these tools shipped breaking changes in 2026, so verify anything decisive on a trial with your own collections. If something here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
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