Postman vs Insomnia vs Bruno: Which API Client Is Best in 2025
Three tools dominate the conversation among developers who test APIs for a living: Postman, the long-time market leader; Insomnia, the design-focused challenger; and Bruno, the open-source upstart that stores collections as plain files on your disk. Each has a distinct philosophy, and in 2025 those differences matter more than ever—thanks to pricing changes, cloud dependencies, and a growing backlash against mandatory accounts and sync.
Here’s how the three compare on the things that actually affect your daily workflow: pricing, offline use, collaboration, Git-friendliness, and scripting.
The 30-Second Overview
Postman is the most feature-complete platform. It handles REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets, mock servers, automated testing, and API documentation. It’s also the heaviest, and its free tier has tightened over time. Postman now requires an account to use most features, and its cloud-first design means your work lives on Postman’s servers unless you pay for enterprise options.
Insomnia (owned by Kong since 2019) sits between the two extremes. It has a polished UI, strong GraphQL support, and a clean request designer. But in 2023, Kong moved several previously free features—including Git sync and multiple users—behind paid plans, which pushed a wave of users to look elsewhere.
Bruno launched in 2022 as a direct answer to that frustration. It’s open source (MIT-licensed core), stores collections as .bru files in a folder you own, and works entirely offline by default. No account, no cloud, no vendor lock-in. You version your API collections with Git just like source code.
Pricing: Where the Real Divide Shows
| Plan | Postman | Insomnia | Bruno |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Limited (cloud sync caps, shared requests) | Limited (1 project, no Git sync) | Fully free, unlimited |
| Paid starting point | ~$14/user/month (Basic) | ~$12/user/month (Individual) | ~$6–19/user one-time (optional paid tiers) |
| Team plans | ~$19–49/user/month | ~$24/user/month | Free or self-hosted |
Postman’s free tier is generous for solo developers but restrictive for teams—shared request limits and sync caps push small teams toward paid plans quickly. Insomnia’s free tier now allows only one project and no Git sync, which is a significant constraint for anyone managing multiple APIs. Bruno’s core app is free with no limits; the paid tiers (Bruno Plus and a commercial license) are optional and priced as a one-time purchase rather than a subscription.
If cost predictability matters, Bruno wins by a wide margin. If you need enterprise-grade governance, SSO, and audit logs, Postman’s higher tiers are built for that.
Offline and Local-First Workflows
This is Bruno’s strongest differentiator. Collections live as plain-text files in a folder structure you choose. You can open them in any editor, diff them, branch them, and merge them with standard Git tooling. There’s no proprietary format and no server round-trip.
Postman and Insomnia both support offline work to varying degrees, but their default model is cloud sync. Postman’s local storage exists, but collaboration and many features assume the cloud. Insomnia allows local vault storage, but Git sync is a paid feature.
For teams that already treat infrastructure as code, Bruno’s file-based model fits naturally into existing review workflows. A pull request that changes an API request is reviewable line by line—something neither Postman nor Insomnia offers out of the box.
Scripting and Test Automation
Postman leads here. Its scripting environment (JavaScript, with the pm.* API) is mature, well-documented, and supported by a large ecosystem of examples. Collection Runner and the CLI tool Newman make CI integration straightforward, and Postman’s monitors can run tests on a schedule.
Insomnia supports scripting too, with a simpler API, but its test automation story is thinner. It’s better suited to interactive exploration than to building a regression suite.
Bruno supports JavaScript scripting and has a CLI (bru) for CI pipelines. It’s younger, so the ecosystem of examples and community answers is smaller—but it covers the common cases: pre-request scripts, post-response assertions, environment variables, and collection-level scripts.
If automated API testing at scale is your primary use case, Postman remains the safest bet. If you mostly need to explore and document APIs with occasional scripted checks, all three are adequate.
Collaboration and Team Features
Postman’s collaboration tools are the most developed: workspaces, role-based access, comments, version history, and API documentation publishing. It’s built for teams that want a shared source of truth, even if that truth lives in Postman’s cloud.
Insomnia offers team collaboration on paid plans, including shared projects and Git sync. It’s competent but less comprehensive than Postman.
Bruno’s collaboration model is Git. Teams share collections through a repository, and access control is whatever your Git host provides—GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or self-hosted. That’s elegant for engineering teams and awkward for non-technical stakeholders who expect a web UI.
Protocol Support and Niche Features
- GraphQL: Insomnia has historically had the best GraphQL experience, with schema introspection and query autocomplete. Postman’s GraphQL support is solid but less refined. Bruno added GraphQL support and it works well, though the tooling is less mature.
- gRPC: Postman and Insomnia both support gRPC. Bruno’s gRPC support is more limited.
- WebSockets and SSE: Postman covers both. Insomnia supports WebSockets. Bruno’s support is narrower.
- Mock servers and API docs: Postman is the clear leader, with built-in mock servers and documentation generation. Neither Insomnia nor Bruno matches this.
Who Should Use Which
Choose Postman if: you need a full API platform—testing, mocking, documentation, monitoring—and your team is comfortable with a cloud-first, subscription-based tool. It’s the default for a reason.
Choose Insomnia if: you want a cleaner, lighter interface than Postman, work heavily with GraphQL, and are willing to pay for team features. It’s a good middle ground for individual developers and small teams.
Choose Bruno if: you value local-first storage, Git-native collaboration, open-source licensing, and predictable costs. It’s the strongest fit for engineering teams that treat API collections as code and want to avoid vendor lock-in.
The Bottom Line
There’s no universal winner in 2025—the right choice depends on whether you optimize for platform breadth or for ownership and simplicity. Postman still does the most, and charges accordingly. Insomnia offers a polished middle path, though its feature gating has narrowed its appeal. Bruno trades ecosystem maturity for transparency, offline reliability, and a file-based workflow that fits modern engineering practices.
For solo developers and small teams who live in Git, Bruno is the most compelling option right now. For organizations that need governance, documentation, and enterprise collaboration, Postman remains the pragmatic default. The gap between them is mostly about what you’re willing to trade: features for freedom, or freedom for features.