TL;DR: Bruno is the most relevant API client.
We’re going to quickly compare the four most “popular” API clients. The goal isn’t an exhaustive benchmark but rather to highlight what drove our shift. And later in the article, we’ll explore the features that make the winner stand out.
Here are the four candidates (in order of creation):
- Postman, the factory everyone uses
- Insomnia, Postman’s challenger
- Bruno, open source and Git-oriented
- Yaak, open source successor to Insomnia
The Factory: Postman
Founded in 2012 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, and Abhijit Kane, starting as a Chrome extension before becoming a standalone application. Postman is the tool everyone knows, the pioneer, and for years it was an incredible ally on projects.
postman interface
You’ll find a particularly complete ecosystem: a VSCode extension, a CLI through Newman, a large community, and solid documentation. Cloud synchronization lets teams work directly in the project, and scripting capabilities add real flexibility for automating tests.
On the negative side, the tool shows some structural limitations. WebSockets are isolated in a separate collection, which hurts consistency. The Postman CLI requires an API key, and Newman, while functional, is less well integrated than Postman’s native CLI.
But the elephant in the room is the mandatory connected mode and everything that comes with it. The client is slow, synchronization isn’t always reliable, and performance has degraded over time. And even without a paid subscription, your collections end up in the cloud without automatic synchronization with your Git repository.
The Challenger: Insomnia
Created in 2016 by Gregory Schier, then acquired by Kong in 2019. The initial goal was to offer a simpler, lighter alternative to Postman. Since the acquisition, the philosophy has shifted toward integration into the Kong ecosystem, with a focus on API design and testing in more enterprise-oriented environments.
insomnia interface
Insomnia has plugins that extend its functionality and an integrated CLI, which covers the basic needs for automating tests.
The limitations are more numerous, though. The interface is less readable than its competitors, and documentation sometimes lacks clarity. Like Postman, collections are saved in a single file, and this is where the Git problem becomes concrete:
As long as changes are purely additive, it works. But once you start having conflicts between additions and modifications in the middle of the file, it quickly becomes unmanageable. We’re talking about a JSON file potentially thousands of lines long, with no human-readable structure, where resolving a Git conflict is more like surgery than a standard merge. A single misplaced brace and the collection is corrupted.
The Outsider: Bruno
Launched in 2022 by Anoop M D. The philosophy is explicitly anti-cloud and pro-local: collections live in the filesystem, in plain text, natively versionable with Git. The goal is to give control back to developers, without mandatory accounts or forced cloud synchronization.
bruno interface
Bruno stands out clearly with its file-oriented approach: each request is saved in an individual file named after it, making Git diffs readable and versioning natural. Git diff is available for free, with commit, push, and pull in the paid version. The tool also offers a CLI, a VSCode extension, scripting with a simplified system of assertions and post-request variables, WebSockets in the same collection, and HTML test reports accessible for free via the CLI.
The main friction point is the learning curve for scripting, less immediate than on more established tools. Runtime variables aren’t overridable either, which can block certain advanced workflows.
The New Kid: Yaak
Created around 2023 by Gregory Schier, the same creator as Insomnia, whom he left after the Kong acquisition. Yaak looks like a direct response to what Insomnia became. The stated philosophy is minimalism and simplicity, with local storage and native Git integration, in the same vein as Bruno but with an even more stripped-down approach.
yaak interface
Yaak focuses on a minimalist interface and line-by-line request display, which makes it pleasant to use daily. Like Bruno, it saves each request in an individual file and natively integrates Git diff, commit, push, and pull. WebSockets are in the same collection, and plugins are available to extend functionality.
The limitations, however, are significant. The tool is still young and it shows: no scripting, no tests, no CLI for executing requests. Filenames are randomly generated, which hurts readability in a Git repository. And the pricing can be a barrier, especially against more mature alternatives that offer more features at a similar cost.
Are We Really Abandoning Postman?
We should revisit this for a moment. For a long time, it was the undisputed reference. The tool everyone installed without question. But Postman is a pretty emblematic example of enshittification: a product that starts by serving its users, then uses them to serve its investors. Mandatory connection, forced cloud, key features gradually locked behind a subscription, an interface that grows with each version without the baseline experience improving. It’s no accident that Bruno and Yaak emerged precisely during this period. They’re partly a direct response to this trajectory.
The Big Winner in 2026
Insomnia, for its part, has followed a similar trajectory to Postman after its Kong acquisition in 2019. The fact that Gregory Schier, its original creator, started from scratch to build Yaak says a lot about what the product became.
And finally, Yaak shares the same philosophy as Bruno but remains too immature to recommend in production. The absence of scripting, tests, and CLI are too significant gaps for a team that needs to automate and secure its workflows.
That leaves us with Bruno.
What Makes Bruno Strong
Bruno’s strength lies in its philosophy: an open source tool, local by default, that respects your workflow rather than imposing its own. No account, no forced cloud, no features stripped away in the next paid update. Just a tool that does what you ask of it.
If Bruno interests you, the next article goes into the details: configuration, scripting, Git integration, and daily workflow.
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