Postman became too expensive for teams. I found a free and better alternative

#postman #api #testing #requestly

I was working with a friend on a side project, and we had been using Postman for API testing and collaboration for a long time. A few weeks ago, we realized we could no longer collaborate in Postman without paying. We Google it for answers and found shocking news, Postman had quietly changed its pricing and removed team collaboration from the free plan entirely.

When we checked the new pricing (which is effective from March 2026), the Free plan had no team collaboration. Team collaboration now costs $19 per team member per month. That means:

A team of 2 - $38/month ($456/year)
A team of 4 - $76/month ($912/year)

For a small side project that felt too much.

I found a better Open Source alternative: Requestly

After going through a lot of Postman alternatives, I found Requestly a better tool. It is Open Source and has insane features that are actually better than Postman. It is a local-first API Client with Native Git Sync and robust free team collaboration. It also has HTTP Interceptor and API Mocking out of the box.

How we migrated from Postman

Migration becomes the biggest issue when adopting new tools, but not in our case, as Requestly has a one-click Postman importer.

Migration steps:

1. Export your Collections from Postman

Open Postman, find the collection you want to export, and click the three-dot ( … ) menu to export the collection.

After clicking to export, select the recommended Collection v2.1 format and save the file to your local machine.

2. Import the Collections into Requestly

Open Requestly, select API Client, click "import" which is on the left sidebar, then select "Postman Collections and Environments" option.

Then select the file that you want to import.

Start collaborating with your team in Requestly

To collaborate with your team, you need to create a team workspace. In the left sidebar, click "Add" in the team workspace section.

Then give a name to the workspace, and click Create Workspace.

Then you can invite your team and start collaborating.

We've been using Requestly for a few weeks now and haven't looked back. The migration was painless, the collaboration features work flawlessly, and the tool is genuinely more powerful for our workflow than Postman ever was.

Official docs for migrating from Postman to Requestly: https://docs.requestly.com/general/api-client/import-export/import-from-postman#importing-into-requestly

Thanks for Reading.