I got tired of Postman using 1GB RAM, so I built Ghostman (TUI API Client)

4yk5 — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 07:54:50 +0000

Hi everyone,

Like many developers, I got frustrated with what happened to Postman: it turned from a simple dev tool into a 1GB+ Electron app that forces cloud accounts, team workspaces, and telemetry just to test an endpoint.

So I built Ghostman — a lightweight, keyboard-first terminal API studio that respects your system and privacy.

Why use Ghostman over Postman?

RAM & Startup:
Postman: Uses 800MB - 1.5GB RAM, slow to start.
Ghostman: Takes ~40MB, starts in under 200ms right in your terminal.
Cloud & Privacy:
Postman: Pushes your collections to the cloud, requires login.
Ghostman: 100% Local-First. Collections live in plain YAML (.ghostman/collections.yaml) inside your repo. Commit it to Git with your team. Zero accounts, zero tracking.
Built-in Webhook Receiver (The Killer Feature):
Postman: Testing incoming webhooks (Stripe, GitHub, Discord) requires setting up external tunnels (ngrok) or web mock tools.
Ghostman: Hit Ctrl+W and it instantly spins up a local receiver on port 9090. Incoming HTTP callbacks show up live on your screen.
Keyboard-Driven Workflow:
Complete requests, inspect formatted JSON responses, and view latency telemetry (ms) without taking your hands off the keyboard.

It is 100% open source under the MIT License (screenshots in the repo):
https://github.com/4yk5/Ghostman

If you find it useful, feel free to give it a star or share your feedback!

DEV Community: 4yk5

I got tired of Postman using 1GB RAM, so I built Ghostman (TUI API Client)