An API client is the simplest tool a developer owns. It sends a request and shows you the reply. Somewhere between 2014 and now it grew a login screen, a cloud workspace, an AI credit meter and a per-seat invoice, and the request itself did not change at all.
Bruno is the loudest argument that it never needed any of that.
The best open source Postman alternative for most developers is Bruno: MIT licensed, free to run on Mac, Windows and Linux, with every collection stored as plain text files in your own Git repo, and a paid Pro tier at $6 per user a month billed yearly (checked Oct 29, 2026). Hoppscotch is the pick if you want the client in a browser, Insomnia if you want Kong's protocol breadth and a free three-person Git sync, and Yaak if you want a local-first desktop app from the person who built Insomnia in the first place.
What changed at Postman in 2026
Postman's free plan now covers one person, and a team of two starts at $38 a month. An Internet Archive snapshot of postman.com/pricing from January 31, 2026 lists the Free plan with “Up to 3 free users”, Basic at $14 per user a month billed yearly, and Professional at $29. Postman's own documentation says the plans changed in March 2026 and the Free plan “is limited to one user and can't create a team”. On Oct 29, 2026 the pricing page shows Solo at $9 a month billed yearly ($12 monthly), Team at $19 per user a month billed yearly ($23 monthly), and Enterprise at “Contact sales”. Postman did give things back: collection runs and mock servers are now unlimited on every plan.
The request did not get more expensive. The second person did. Postman's cheapest shared seat went from $0 to $19 a month in one pricing change.
The open source Postman alternatives
Of the 66 API testing tools in the AppClap catalog (Oct 29, 2026), 25 are open source and 50 have a free tier. Four of them are serious Postman replacements.
Bruno
Bruno is a desktop API client that saves each collection as a folder of plain text files in its own “Bru” format, so your requests live next to your code and get reviewed in pull requests. It is free to download; Pro is $6 per user a month billed yearly and Ultimate is $11 (checked Oct 29, 2026). The licence is MIT, the repo has about forty-eight thousand stars, and version 4.3.0 shipped on October 22 (repo). It is best for teams that already review everything through Git. The drawback is that the free tier's Git panel can clone, diff, pull and commit but not push or branch; that lives in Pro.
Hoppscotch
Hoppscotch is a browser-first API client you can also self-host. The Free plan is $0 “forever” with a personal workspace and a collection runner; Business is $6 per user a month billed yearly and adds team workspaces and mocking; Enterprise is $11 (checked Oct 29, 2026 on hoppscotch.com). It is MIT licensed with about eighty-one thousand stars, the most here, and released 2026.9.0 on September 30 (repo). It is best for people who do not want to install anything. The drawback is that the free plan is personal: sharing a workspace with one colleague means a Business seat or your own server.
Insomnia
Insomnia is Kong's client for REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSockets, SSE and SOAP, with a command line tool for CI. Essentials is $0 and includes Git Sync for up to three users and unlimited collection runs; Pro is $12 per user a month, or $10 billed yearly; Enterprise is $45 (checked Oct 29, 2026). The code is Apache-2.0 with about forty thousand stars, and release 13.3.1 landed on October 9 (repo). It is best for teams that touch more than one protocol. The drawback is history: version 8.0 in 2023 required an account to use the app, and the GitHub issues filled with people who had chosen Insomnia because it did not. Today's pricing page answers that with a “local-only, free forever Scratch Pad” for anyone who will not log in.
Yaak
Yaak is a local-first desktop client built in Rust and Tauri, with one YAML file per request and a built-in Git panel. Its creator, Gregory Schier, puts it plainly on the Yaak site: “I created Insomnia in 2014 and sold it in 2019.” Yaak is free for personal use; a commercial licence is $79 a year or $399 once for an individual, and $149 per user a year for a business (checked Oct 29, 2026). It is MIT licensed with about nineteen thousand stars, and version 2026.9.0 came out on October 10 (repo). It is best for a developer who wants speed and no account. The drawback is that using it at work needs a licence, and the site calls the project “100% bootstrapped”, so it is one person's roadmap.
| Tool | Licence | Free tier | Cheapest paid | Where collections live |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postman | Proprietary | 1 user | $9/mo Solo, $19/user Team (yearly) | Postman cloud, or native Git |
| Bruno | MIT | Unlimited, local | $6/user/mo yearly | Text files in your repo |
| Hoppscotch | MIT | 1 personal workspace | $6/user/mo yearly | Cloud, or your server |
| Insomnia | Apache-2.0 | 3 users on Git Sync | $10/user/mo yearly | Local, Git or Kong cloud |
| Yaak | MIT | Personal use | $79/yr per person | YAML files, Git |
The terminal has its own wave, led by Hurl, which runs requests from a plain text file: about nineteen thousand stars, 8.1.0 out on October 28 (repo).
Postman vs Bruno
Postman is a cloud platform with a client attached, and Bruno is a client with a text format attached. Sharing a Postman collection means a Team seat at $19 per user a month billed yearly; sharing a Bruno collection means git push. Postman wins on everything that happens after you hit send: scheduled monitors, hosted mocks, published docs, Enterprise governance. Bruno wins on what happens before: your requests are reviewable, diffable files that outlive any vendor. On list prices, a five-person team pays $95 a month on Postman Team and $30 on Bruno Pro.
Is Postman free?
Postman is free for one person. The Free plan on Oct 29, 2026 includes the API client, specs and mock servers, native Git, unlimited Collection Runner and performance test runs, manual Flows and 100 AI credits, and Postman's help centre says there are no restrictions on using it commercially. What it no longer includes is a second person: since March 2026 the Free plan cannot create a team, so the moment two people need to edit the same collection, one of them is buying Team.
What you actually take on
Postman's paid plans buy things a text file does not do. Monitors run your collections on a schedule from Postman's servers, mock servers answer before the backend exists, documentation publishes itself, and Enterprise adds SSO, SCIM, audit logs and an API catalog that a 500-person company genuinely needs.
The free path has its own bill. Git collaboration is only free if everyone on the team is comfortable with Git, and a product manager who wants to try an endpoint may not be. Self-hosting Hoppscotch is a server you run and patch. Yaak's licence is due the moment it is used at work. If your whole company is one backend team of three, Insomnia's free Git Sync still does what Postman's old free plan did.
- 1Do more than one of you need to edit the same collections?
- 2Is everyone who will use the client already comfortable with Git?
- 3Are you using Postman's monitors, hosted mocks or published docs today, or just sending requests?
- 4Does it bother you that the requests you wrote live in someone else's cloud?
This series keeps walking down a hallway of paid-app doors: dictation and meeting notes, the deploy platform and the inbox, the CRM, the login, the mailbox, the visitor book, the back office, the shop window, the appointment book. This one is the workbench, the door a developer opens fifty times a day, and it just quietly started charging for the second chair. We keep writing these at AppClap because the search for software should put the tool you can own next to the famous one, with the bill spelled out. Our Postman alternatives page lists what we track, or describe it in your own words: an API client that keeps collections in git with no per-seat plan. Then spend thirty seconds on the question underneath it. The next time your team grows by one, do you want that to be a commit, or an invoice?
