If you opened Postman recently and hit a wall sharing a collection with a teammate, you're not imagining it — as of March 2026, Postman's free tier is capped at 1 user. Solo, that's survivable. For a two-person side project it's an instant "upgrade to Team at $19/user/mo" prompt.
I write about cheap dev stacks, so I went through the actual alternatives and itemized what each gives you for free. Quick rundown:
Bruno — my pick if you live in Git. Collections are plain-text .bru files on disk (MIT-licensed, offline-first), so "sharing" is just committing to your repo. No accounts, no sync tier, secrets stay local. Postman, but you own your data.
Insomnia — the easiest like-for-like switch after the cutback. Kong-owned, open-source, and the free tier includes Git Sync for up to 3 users — actual free small-team collaboration.
Hoppscotch — web-based, MIT, with the widest protocol set (REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, SSE, Socket.IO, MQTT). Unlimited free real-time workspaces, and you can self-host the whole thing.
Thunder Client — if you basically live in VS Code and want something lightweight. Heads up: the free tier is single-device and paywalls environments, so it's more "personal" than "team."
The honest summary: want free team collaboration? Insomnia or Hoppscotch. Want to own your data / go Git-native? Bruno. Want lightweight in-editor? Thunder Client.
Full feature-by-feature breakdown (collections, environments, scripting, CLI/CI, self-host) here if you want the details: Postman alternatives compared →
What did you switch to after the free-tier change?
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