Making It Work Is Right!

Kristie White — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:04:12 +0000

I'll be straight: DevBook was built by AI. I know, I know — stay with me.

Because the punchline is that I've spent the last week using it to hammer the OpenAI API, and there's something deeply satisfying about using an AI-built tool to run your own AI experiments faster than you ever could in Postman.

You're not trusting AI. You're making it work for you. Different thing.

It's a browser-based API workbench. No download. No Electron bloat. No $14/seat/month Postman invoice landing in your inbox. Just open devpad-ves9.polsia.app and start firing requests.

Here's what it actually does — no fluff:

API Key Vault
Drop your keys in once — {{openai_key}}, {{stripe_key}}, {{twilio_key}} — and they auto-fill across every template. Zero re-entering. Zero copy-paste accidents.

Template Builder with {{placeholders}}
Write your request once. Mark dynamic parts with {{placeholders}}. DevBook turns them into a real fillable form automatically. Testing gpt-4o vs gpt-4o-mini? Just swap the {{model}} field. No JSON editing. No fat-fingering brackets at 1am.

Split-Screen Response Viewer
Request on top. Response on the bottom. Syntax-highlighted, status color-coded (200 green, 4xx orange, 5xx red), with response time in ms. That's it. That's the feature.

Searchable Request Index
Every template you save is instantly searchable. No folder trees. No collections. No "where did I put that webhook test" moment.

Why this beats the status quo:
Postman made sense when it was free and simple. Now it's a $14/seat/month platform trying to be everything. A team of 5 pays $70/month for what is fundamentally a request-sending utility. That's wild.

On the "AI-built" thing:

Most AI-built tools get bloated fast — throw every feature at the wall, ship it, move on. DevBook went the other way. No environments, no workspaces, no nested collections. It made deliberate choices about what to leave out, and that's honestly harder to get right than adding features.

The result is a tool that does exactly what you actually reach for — and nothing you have to learn around.

Three steps and you're done:

Add your API keys to the vault
Build a template with {{placeholders}}
Fill, send, reuse. Build your library.

2-week free trial. No credit card. Start in 30 second

Why I created a Postman Alternative

Kristie White — Sun, 03 May 2026 22:49:04 +0000

Postman used to be great. Simple, focused, free for individual devs. Then it got expensive, bloated, and slow.

Last year I watched them roll out the $14-49/month per-seat pricing. I watched teams shrink their API testing because paying for 5 licenses wasn't in the budget anymore. I watched the app balloon to 400MB+. I watched features pile on that nobody asked for.

So I built something different. DevBook — a lightweight API testing tool that remembers what API clients are supposed to do: test endpoints quickly, securely store API keys, and get out of your way.

The Problem With Postman (And Why You're Probably Frustrated)

Pricing that punishes teams

$14/month solo, $49/month "professional" per seat. A team of five developers? That's $245/month minimum. For testing APIs. Most teams I talked to just shared one license and hoped Postman didn't notice.

Memory hog mentality

Postman alone eats 300-500MB RAM on startup. Add your IDE, database client, browser, and you're swapping to disk while waiting for a request to come back. It's 2026 and we're writing bloatware.

Cloud lock-in and feature creep

Everything lives in their cloud (collections, history, variables). They keep adding "AI features" and "monitoring" and "security scanning" because they need to justify the pricing. You just wanted to test an API.

JSON, JSON everywhere

Raw JSON for everything. Want to test a login endpoint with three different user IDs? You're writing arrays and loops in JSON. Compare that to filling in a form.

What ReqPad Does Differently

Templates, not collections

Define an API endpoint once. Fillable input fields for parameters. No JSON, no nesting, no collection nonsense. Test the same endpoint with different values in seconds. It sounds simple because it is.

Centralized, secure API key vault

One place to store your API keys. Encrypted. Shared securely with your team if you need it. Stop pasting Bearer token_xxxxx into request headers and then accidentally committing it.

Split-screen interface

Left side: your request (method, URL, headers, body). Right side: the response, parsed and readable. No hidden panels, no accordion menus, no "click here to see the response." What you see is what you get.

Fair pricing

$19/month flat. All users. All endpoints. No per-seat, no per-request, no hidden tiers. Team of 10? Still $19. Startup or enterprise — price doesn't change.

Zero learning curve

If you've ever filled out a form, you can use ReqPad. That's the design goal.

See It in Action

Open the live demo:

Create a free account (no credit card). Test any public API. Store your keys. Invite teammates. It's yours to use immediately.

Build a simple GET request to a weather API. No collections. No setup. Click "Send." See the response split-screen.

What's Coming Next

Request history — Automatically save every request you've sent (useful for "wait, what payload did I use last week?").

Team sharing — Clone request templates across your workspace. Comment on responses. Audit who tested what and when.

Export — OpenAPI specs, Postman collections if you need them, raw curl commands for your documentation.

The Postman Exodus Happened

If you're here, you probably tried Postman on a team and hit the wall. $245/month hurt. The bloat hurt. The cloud-lock hurt.

You're not alone. Thousands of devs abandoned Postman in the last six months. Some went back to curl. Some paid the premium and resented it. Some used Bruno (open source, offline-first, solid).

ReqPad isn't for everyone. If you need advanced monitoring or collaboration on a massive scale, stick with Postman. But if you want a tool that works offline, costs $19/month flat, and remembers what "lightweight" means? We're ready.

Try It Free

No credit card. No time limit. No locked features in the free tier.

— Sign up, test an endpoint, store an API key. That's the whole pitch.

DEV Community: Kristie White

Making It Work Is Right!

2-week free trial. No credit card. Start in 30 second

Why I created a Postman Alternative