At the start of this year I began building Flux, an open source alternative to Postman. The goal was simple: an API client that feels light, runs natively and keeps your work on your own machine.
I launched it in July, and as of today it has a little under 500 downloads, which is more than I expected when I started.
What it is
Flux is a native desktop API client built with Tauri 2, Rust and React. It uses under 30 MB of RAM and the installer is around 9 MB.
It's local-first: your collections and requests live on your machine, and cloud sync is optional, not a requirement.
Besides regular HTTP requests, it has a few things built in that I'd normally need separate tools for:
- gRPC support
- Load testing, so you can hit an endpoint hard without installing anything else
- Mock servers, for when the backend isn't ready yet
- AI helpers: generating test suites, diagnosing errors, autocomplete, and editing request bodies in plain language
Why Tauri instead of Electron
Electron ships a full copy of Chromium and runs a Node backend inside every app. Tauri takes a different route: it uses the operating system's own webview for the interface, and the backend is Rust. That's where most of the savings in memory and installer size come from.
For an app you leave open all day next to your editor, your browser and everything else, that difference adds up.
It's open source, and I'd love help
Flux is MIT-licensed, and I'm building it in public. If you want to contribute, there's plenty to do: bug fixes, new features, better docs, or just telling me what you'd want from an API client.
If you try it and something breaks, opening an issue helps a lot. And if you're curious how a Tauri app is put together, the code is a decent place to poke around.
- Website and download: https://fluxapi.dev
- Code: https://github.com/angeldevmobile/Flux-Post
If you've switched away from Postman or Insomnia, I'd like to know what made you do it, and what Flux would need for you to switch.
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