Postman vs Insomnia vs Bruno: Best API Testing Tool for REST and GraphQL in 2025

API testing tools have changed more in the past two years than in the previous decade. In 2023, Postman’s decision to remove the Scratch Pad and push users toward cloud-synced workspaces triggered a backlash that sent developers hunting for alternatives. Insomnia’s 2024 acquisition by API security company Kong raised new questions about telemetry and account requirements. And a relative newcomer, Bruno, has gained serious traction by doing the opposite of everyone else: storing collections as plain files on your local disk, with no mandatory cloud account.

If you’re choosing an API client in 2025 for REST and GraphQL work, the decision now involves trade-offs around data ownership, team collaboration, pricing, and workflow fit—not just which tool has the prettiest interface. Here’s how the three stack up.

The Short Version

• Postman remains the most feature-complete platform, with the strongest collaboration, documentation, and CI/CD tooling. It’s also the heaviest and most cloud-centric.
• Insomnia offers a cleaner, lighter experience with strong GraphQL support, but its ownership by Kong and account requirements make some teams uneasy.
• Bruno wins on data ownership and simplicity—collections live in Git as plain text—but has a smaller ecosystem and fewer enterprise features.

Postman: The Incumbent With the Deepest Feature Set

Postman is the default for a reason. It supports REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, and SOAP in one client, and its ecosystem extends well beyond sending requests: mock servers, automated documentation, monitors, and the Newman CLI for running collections in CI pipelines.

Strengths:

• GraphQL support includes schema introspection, a query editor with autocomplete, and the ability to store GraphQL variables alongside requests.
• Collaboration is the best in class—shared workspaces, role-based access, comments, and version history.
• Automation via Newman and the Postman API integrates cleanly with GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and other CI systems.
• Ecosystem: thousands of public API collections and a large community mean answers are easy to find.

Weaknesses:

• Resource footprint. Postman is built on Electron and is noticeably heavier than the alternatives. On older laptops, it’s a battery drain.
• Cloud-first design. Collections sync to Postman’s cloud by default. The 2023 Scratch Pad removal made local-only workflows harder, and while Postman later restored some offline capability, the direction of travel is clear.
• Pricing pressure. The free tier is generous for individuals, but team plans get expensive quickly. The Basic plan runs about $14 per user per month billed annually; Professional is around $29, and Enterprise pricing is custom.
• Login requirements for most functionality remain a friction point for developers working in restricted or air-gapped environments.

Postman is the right choice if your organization values a single platform for testing, documentation, and monitoring, and if cloud sync is acceptable or desirable.

Insomnia: Polished, GraphQL-Friendly, and Now Kong-Owned

Insomnia has long been the designer-friendly alternative to Postman, with a clean interface and excellent GraphQL tooling. Its GraphQL support includes schema fetching, autocomplete, and a dedicated query editor that many developers prefer over Postman’s.

Strengths:

• GraphQL experience is arguably the best of the three for interactive query building, especially with schema-driven autocomplete.
• Lightweight feel compared with Postman, though it’s also Electron-based.
• Environment and variable management is intuitive, and the plugin system allows customization.
• Design-first workflow: Insomnia’s OpenAPI editor is solid for teams that spec APIs before building them.

Weaknesses:

• Account requirements. Insomnia now requires an account to use, and its cloud sync is tied to Kong’s infrastructure. For developers who want local-only tools, this is a dealbreaker.
• Telemetry concerns. After the Kong acquisition, Insomnia added telemetry that users must opt out of, which sparked community discussion about data handling.
• Smaller ecosystem than Postman’s, with fewer integrations and public collections.
• Pricing: a free tier exists, but team features require the Pro plan (around $12 per user per month billed annually) or Enterprise.

Insomnia suits individual developers and small teams who prioritize a clean GraphQL workflow and don’t mind cloud accounts. Teams with strict data governance should read the fine print.

Bruno: The Local-First Challenger

Bruno’s pitch is simple and increasingly appealing: your collections are stored as plain-text files (using the open-source Bru markup language) in a folder you choose. You can commit them to Git, review changes in pull requests, and work entirely offline—no account, no cloud, no telemetry.

Strengths:

• Data ownership. Collections live on your filesystem, versioned in your own repository. This is a genuine differentiator for security-conscious teams and regulated industries.
• No account required. Bruno works offline out of the box, which matters for air-gapped environments and developers tired of login walls.
• Git-native collaboration. Diffs and code reviews work the way they do for source code, which fits naturally into existing engineering workflows.
• REST and GraphQL support are both solid, including GraphQL schema introspection and variables.
• Lightweight and fast, with a smaller footprint than the other two.

Weaknesses:

• Younger ecosystem. Bruno’s community and integration library are smaller. Fewer tutorials, fewer plugins, fewer answers on Stack Overflow.
• CI/CD tooling is less mature than Postman’s Newman. A CLI exists, but the automation story is still developing.
• Enterprise features like SSO and advanced access controls are limited compared with Postman.
• GraphQL tooling, while functional, isn’t as polished as Insomnia’s.

Bruno is the strongest pick for teams that treat API collections as code and want to keep them under version control without a vendor in the middle.

How They Compare on the Things That Matter

Criterion	Postman	Insomnia	Bruno
REST support	Excellent	Excellent	Very good
GraphQL support	Very good	Excellent	Good
Local-first storage	Limited	No	Yes (core design)
Account required	Yes (most features)	Yes	No
Git-native collections	Partial	No	Yes
CI/CD tooling	Mature (Newman)	Moderate	Developing
Free tier	Generous	Generous	Fully free core
Team pricing	~$14–29/user/mo	~$12/user/mo (Pro)	Free; paid team tier emerging

Which Should You Choose?

Choose Postman if you need a single platform for testing, documentation, mocking, and monitoring, and your team is comfortable with cloud sync. The collaboration and CI features are hard to match, and the GraphQL support is more than adequate for most teams.

Choose Insomnia if GraphQL is central to your work and you want a cleaner interface than Postman’s. Just verify your organization is comfortable with Kong’s account and telemetry policies before standardizing on it.

Choose Bruno if data ownership, offline work, or Git-based workflows are priorities—particularly in security-sensitive or regulated environments. Accept that you’ll be an early adopter in some areas, especially CI automation.

The Takeaway

There’s no universal winner in 2025, and that’s the point. Postman remains the safest enterprise bet, Insomnia is the GraphQL specialist, and Bruno is the tool for teams that want their API collections to live where their code does. The most useful exercise is to test your actual workflow—a GraphQL-heavy project, a CI pipeline, a shared team collection—against each tool’s free tier before committing. The switching costs are low enough that the decision doesn’t need to be permanent, but the data-ownership question is worth answering deliberately rather than by default.