The API Tooling Crisis: Why developers are abandoning Postman and its clones?
Posted by Successful_Bowl2564@reddit | programming | View on Reddit | 399 comments
Bitter-Apple-7929@reddit
Postmate Client is 100% local and free. It supports parallel execution, response comparison, and test data management out of the box.
MeasurementPlus4291@reddit
I had the same issue. It actually led me to create my own test tool, which also supports other needs I had.
Like local mock server, loadtesting, reports and more importantly, being GIT NAtive. Please take a look https://mmt.dev
MeasurementPlus4291@reddit
try mmt.dev
Far-Lengthiness-2841@reddit
Hey guys, I got fed up with postman and build local only free alternative. It is git friendly(uses yamls to store information) and you can download it at https://apifreeman.eu/
Striking_Weird_8540@reddit
curl works… until you hit anything stateful
auth → create → webhook → retry… things get messy fast
been exploring this direction: https://fetchsandbox.com/docs/stripe
curious if this kind of flow-first testing helps or just overkill
sailing67@reddit
honestly switched from postman to bruno like 8 months ago and havent looked back. the fact that its file-based means it actually works with git properly. tried hoppscotch for a bit too but the offline support wasnt there. at this point postman feels like it forgot who its users are
programming-ModTeam@reddit
No content written mostly by an LLM. If you don't want to write it, we don't want to read it.
sailing67@reddit
tbh postman just got too bloated, switched to bruno and never looked back
programming-ModTeam@reddit
No content written mostly by an LLM. If you don't want to write it, we don't want to read it.
cesarbiods@reddit
Until Bruno gets bloated and forces a sign in because they are a for profit company.
Bitter-Apple-7929@reddit
Since Postman make login mandatory my organizations blocked it.
donatj@reddit
If you are on Mac, https://paw.cloud/ Rapid API (Used to be called Paw) is unbeatable and free now. Used to be a paid app.
rednought@reddit
Great tool. Use it all the time. Hope it doesn't go the same way as some of its peers.
orygin@reddit
Is it open source?
donatj@reddit
It is not. Parts of it are however and I have contributed in the past
https://github.com/orgs/luckymarmot/repositories
moljac024@reddit
All I see is .cloud. Thanks but no thanks
wildjokers@reddit
BloatMan is the single worse rest test client in existence.
I use IntelliJ ‘s ditto based HTTP client and then can commit the requests to version control.
darthcoder@reddit
No, SoapUI is.
kriyabanswanand@reddit
That PTSD is real
kingslayerer@reddit
We use bruno. I can commit it to git. No stupid sign ups.
lppedd@reddit
I use IJ's HTTP client. I can version those files and I don't have to leave the IDE.
Ok_Dust_8620@reddit
they have everything most devs need from API client - variables, environments, scripting, collections.
saint1997@reddit
Until you get a stupid netty java exception with some cryptic error message that you couldn't possibly debug yourself, like I did yesterday (header size > 8192K when literally all I had was
Content-Type: application/json)wildjokers@reddit
Did you report your issue to their issue tracker?
saint1997@reddit
It's been there for 2 years https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IJPL-65392
wildjokers@reddit
There is a workaround mentioned in one of the comments (a plugin). Have you tried that? Also, it appears it is the server responding with a header that is very long. Have you looked into why your server is responding with a long header value? (RFC doesn't set a hard limit, just says headers should be of "reasonable" size).
saint1997@reddit
Quite. In any case this was a one off just to get some audit logs out of a third party vendor, so I didn't do much digging. I'll use the HTTP client again in future but I have definitely noticed IntelliJ feeling buggier and buggier as of late
lppedd@reddit
IJPL-234767 has been fixed yesterday, so it might be out with 2026.1.2+.
saint1997@reddit
Nice. I ended up just using the "copy as cURL" button as a workaround, hopefully I won't have to much longer!
lppedd@reddit
Never had it happen honestly, but would be nice if you could report it on YouTrack.
Sarkos@reddit
I've been using IntelliJ for years and only recently got sufficiently fed up with Postman to check out their HTTP client. It's a little bare bones but honestly a pleasure to use.
altimage@reddit
Last month I switched to JetClient in IntelliJ. It’s paid, but like $30 per year. It took a minute to get arranged and setup how I want, but t’s perfect for us. I like the UI instead of the all-text that IntelliJ does natively.
wildjokers@reddit
Does more than you might think.
lppedd@reddit
Yup that's why I use it. It's simple enough to not get in the way, and it supports import and export to cURL.
CaptainIncredible@reddit
I've used Yaak. It worked for what I needed.
PoisnFang@reddit
I can't justify the cost for Yaak
Apofis@reddit
I use curl and Invoke-WebRequest.
CaptainIncredible@reddit
I tried that, and I respect that a lot. I actually did just raw curl for an issue I was having with Twilio.
It just seemed to be a lot of extra work. Do you have a way of doing it that makes it easy? A series of txt files? Or something?
Apofis@reddit
What extra work? It's just a command line program. If anything, its actually less work and a lot faster. I do have common requests saved it txt files, yes, so I can copy-paste them. They also exist in shell history so I can just recall them with history | grep curl
The_0bserver@reddit
Try httpie. Has solid cli. It has a ui as well but I haven't bothered with it.
reddit_clone@reddit
Why is this down voted? I use curl and Perl (now perl6) too.
Scripts I wrote 20 years ago still work, everywhere.
axonxorz@reddit
Of course we can use [classic tools]. In a discussion about [tools with specific capabilities and desirable QoL features], curl and friends fall short.
I use "Copy as cURL" in firefox nearly every day. If I'm replaying requests, perfect. If I'm doing basic modifications to request params, I'll probably paste that into Bruno or IJ, QoL features help. Sure, I can hotkey through a multiline curl call in my terminal, or I can press tab a few times and ctrl+enter.
van-dame@reddit
Try hurl as well. I used it for quite a few projects.
DDB-@reddit
Love Yaak. Creator is a great dude.
Nicolay77@reddit
I moved from Bruno to Yaak.
AndrewNeo@reddit
Yeah I just switched to Yaak recently. I tried Bruno but it always felt a little clunky.
miversen33@reddit
I just found Yaak and omfg it's exactly what I need.
I toyed with EchoAPI a bit, it's really slick too (offering automated API testing and the ability to heavily document an API endpoint), but the inability to set folder vars made it just not work.
Played with kulala and it works well but I just couldn't get used to it. Found Yaak and I've basically begun building everything around it
-Luciddream-@reddit
I like Yaak and that's what I'm using, but one issue is it can't call endpoints without [forward secrecy](https://github.com/rustls/rustls/issues/62). And I can't force other people to update their certificates.
GuaranteePotential90@reddit
Built Voiden. But don't mind saying that Yaak is great. In fact I think that Yaak and Voiden are the two tools that share a few similar ideas in the sense that they are not trying to be a better or cheaper postman but are something on their own. :)
Suggest anyone who likes Yaak to try Voiden, not to switch but to try and have them both in their arsenal.
Arkanta@reddit
I like yaak way better!
mirageofstars@reddit
Same. And for the same reason.
1RedOne@reddit
Bruno is starting to offer Bruno premium which has me just feeling tired
ryosen@reddit
Funny thing about that. That came from the community a couple of years ago when Bruno was first launched. Folks wanted to make sure that the guy that created the platform could work on it full time and persuaded him to introduce a paid tier. it was to ensure that the program would be able to survive and grow. You absolutely don't need it and they are keeping to the original goal of a free, full-featured replacement for Postman.
1RedOne@reddit
That makes sense, I’m just weary of it being another postman
ThisIsMyCouchAccount@reddit
It's wild how so many people expect something for nothing.
probability_of_meme@reddit
In the world of infinitely reproduceable software, there is nowhere the line can be drawn in a way that makes sense. I expect software to be free, because if it's not, it's just a matter of time before it gets enshittified. Paradoxically, I also expect developers to get paid.
Suggestions?
gimpwiz@reddit
A model that can work pretty well is free software, paid support. (Plus paid use of trademarks and the like.)
CSAtWitsEnd@reddit
There's many open source projects and developers that make it extremely easy to give them money. GitHub sponors, patreon, etc
If you aren't doing any of that, then how can you possibly also hold this opinion:
It cannot be that everyone points to everyone else like "I thought you were gonna pay them?"
Ossur2@reddit
It's called community and environment... those regularly provide things for nothing... and why not? Most things in life are free, the air you breathe is free. Not everything has to be a transaction. People can choose to donate other time to a common environment or community that they find is meaningful. It is OK and very common.
If you find yourself in a community or environment where nothing is free it simply means nobody cares about it or believes in it anymore. And it is sad, it makes people tired to feel that.
ohx@reddit
Never forget corejs guy
svix_ftw@reddit
we've been spoiled by awesome open source for decades.
pretzelfisch@reddit
No they are on the same path as postman and every other api tool. The have a paid product with a free version.
lelanthran@reddit
That path is "closing down"; the value offered by a tool that sends a request and tests the responses against an expected response is minimal.
There is no value-add to these API endpoint testing tools.
ZZartin@reddit
Honestly I don't really care about any of the automation or testing in these tools. I just want something with a reasonable UI that covers the whole scope of api requests and let's me save collections.
Nicolay77@reddit
Try this: https://www.apikulture.com/
lelanthran@reddit
Well testing is incidental to my product, so I had Claude whip up a Python script to do exactly what I needed; there's no reason that you can't do the same either.
My need was to allow an LLM to fuzz my endpoints in addition to testing the happy path; to do that I wanted an easy-for-llm-to-generate format, so that is what I generated.
My focus was not the testing tool, it was my application. It was faster to generate a testing tool than it was to work out the correct incantation for Bruno, Postman, Hurl, etc.
Successful_Bowl2564@reddit (OP)
That is a good observation !
cesarbiods@reddit
How many times will you all have to see the “for profit company launches free API testing product promising to keep a free tier but eventually requires sign in and rug pulls everyone” cycle before you learn? At this point if it’s made by a for profit then it’s not worth your fucking time. Stick to FOSS products or your IDE which has API testing features.
darthcoder@reddit
Why i ended up not using gitkraken even though it was very promising.
I still have my SublimeMerge license. Can't use at my day job, but I use at home exclusively.
GuaranteePotential90@reddit
Yeah. Agree. Speaking for myself, open sourced Voiden a couple of months back. We have another SaaS where we make our money on so we were very happy to let this one be open source, free and in general free from constraints and dependencies that would (eventually) make us make discounts on our initial vision and principles. https://voiden.md/ in case you want to try and provide feedback. (Or simply reply with "just use curl").
GregTheMad@reddit
I'm centimeters away from just writing my own.
gimpwiz@reddit
Does a caterpillar just centimeter down a twig?
HenryUTA@reddit
Same, works great!
Successful_Bowl2564@reddit (OP)
In the article it says:
Bruno is the name coming up most often. It’s open source and stores collections as plain-text files on your drive, which means I can version-control my API tests right alongside the source code in the same repo (unbelievable, right?)
It’s far from perfect, Bruno’s UI lacks polish, and migrating is a headache – scripts often break because the JavaScript sandbox isn’t the same as Postman’s. It also lacks some heavy-hitting enterprise features, such as advanced proxy support. But it’s promising to respect you – the user. At least for now.
AlternativePaint6@reddit
No it doesn't. It's fine. Better than postman's cluttered weird mega app.
A newer, smaller, open source alternative still lacks some advanced enterprise features compared to an older, now paid app?? No way!
FullPoet@reddit
I think you've replied to an AI reply.
aa-b@reddit
That's just a direct quote from the article (but yes the quote reads like AI)
aa-b@reddit
I like Bruno, but my company hasn't bought licenses and it's annoying how relatively basic features are paywalled. Like, running the same request in a loop to generate traffic on a dashboard is not a super advanced power-user feature. And I keep running into issues where the "copy as cURL" feature breaks for no reason, that's annoying.
Otherwise it's good, but I wish there was an actually free and completely open version. For a not-really-free product, I think it'd be nice if importing from postman actually worked without needing so much fixing. Oh well, maybe one day.
yup_its_me_again@reddit
I don't like Bruno. It's slow to load my collections and the paradigm to first save a new request, instead of trying and then saving, annoys me
dietibol@reddit
Postman also supports this these days with the most recent release
htraos@reddit
Yaak. Please.
kingslayerer@reddit
I tried yak, but electron apps are giving me shit on wayland. Bruno was working on wayland. But now I am on x11 anyways
m_adduci@reddit
Same here with JMeter
unknown_r00t@reddit
Also if you are not into UI and want something that you can easily commit into git, I’ve made Resterm which basically works on .http/.rest files. It’s TUI app and not UI and fully keyboard driven so it’s more like alternative to those who prefer working directly in the terminal.
https://github.com/unkn0wn-root/resterm
holeydood3@reddit
I like it, but don't do anything with large payloads or responses or you'll discover it's gigantic memory leak that compound very quickly.
battlecities@reddit
I've moved one of our collections to their new YAML format and it's a lot faster than the .bru format. Pain in the ass to do, though they're supposedly coming up with a native tool to convert it soon. I think there are a few 3rd party scripts floating around to do the conversion, but my employer is pretty strict on not using outside scripts.
holeydood3@reddit
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that option. I'll give it a shot!
the_rizzler@reddit
Even importing large collections or large anything really...
ericl666@reddit
I love Bruno. And it can import postman collections. Win-win
coyoteazul2@reddit
We don't talk about Bruno, no, no, no
We don't talk about Bruno, but...
lelanthran@reddit
Enchanting...
Aridez@reddit
When I copy requests that have a session from the browser as curl, for some reason on bruno those doesn't work, while they do on postman... If anyone has any insight on this I'd love to jump away
AuroraFireflash@reddit
This was one of my chief complaints with Postman. Especially when we tried to use it for testing. No easy way to put the scripts and tests in the same repo as the code.
CmdrSausageSucker@reddit
yes, I can confirm this. I introduced Bruno to all projects I manage, everybody is happy and the requests + some documentation even can be added to the repos. I like.
Ok_Dust_8620@reddit
I walked away from Postman after they had an outage that affected my ability to make API requests to my local API, which was very frustrating and stupid. Then it took them some time to recover all my collections. I was happy with Postman when it was just a simple API client without requiring a login and when it could work perfectly in offline mode. That's why I switched to using simple HTTP files in PyCharm. And it was a smooth transition, they have all the functionality I need - collections, variables, scripting and environments.
loganbootjak@reddit
It used to be a great tool, but everything is stored/rendered on their server or something. It's a painfully slow wait every time you want to open a request or an environment. It's like someone decided to upgrade the software, then most of the people peaced out, and it's been in a state of limbo for the past 2 years.
jduartedj@reddit
switched to .http files in vscode like 2 years ago and never looked back. the REST Client extension does everything i need, its version controlled with the project, and theres no account or cloud sync nonsense
the moment postman required login to use a tool that should fundamentally work offline was when i knew it was over. its an HTTP client, not a SaaS platform. the whole trajectory of taking simple developer tools and turning them into "collaboration platforms" with mandatory accounts is exhausting
bruno is good too if you want somthing more GUI-like. stores everything as plain files so you can commit it alongside your code. honestly i think the best API tools going forward are going to be the ones that embrace being boring and local rather than trying to become the next $5B unicorn
sehron@reddit
this is a mega useful bit of information. didn't know you could do this.
jduartedj@reddit
yeah honestly REST Client is one of those extensions that just keeps paying off. theres also some neat stuff like environment files (rest-client.environmentVariables in settings.json) so you can swap between dev/staging/prod without editing the actual requests. and chaining works too, you can grab a token from one response and feed it into the next request as a variable, which makes auth flows super clean
GuaranteePotential90@reddit
Agree. Being boring and stay out of the freakin way, while devs do stuff. Built (and open sourced) Voiden based on this principle, you can try out. https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden
4r73m190r0s@reddit
https://justuse.org/curl/
Mean_Confection_5614@reddit
lmao
nick898@reddit
I saw a colleague using postman to test some restful apis once and all I saw was a GUI wrapper around curl
Tzukkeli@reddit
How do you multienv with curl? Pipe env= down the line? I know Linux, but there is no way I know how to that, and dont get me started on scripts based on another response (e.g passing bearer). There was a place for Postman in the past that curl just couldn't solve (enough easily).
Bush-Men209@reddit
Yeah, curl can do a lot, but once you're juggling multiple environments, auth, and chained requests, Postman stops feeling like just a GUI wrapper pretty fast.
fletku_mato@reddit
Not exactly rocket science.
deliciousleopard@reddit
Witchcraft!
ShroomSensei@reddit
They don’t.
Kendos-Kenlen@reddit
It's a GUI over a CLI, which makes copy/pasting, editing payload, syntax highlighting & general UX by not having to remember every options by hearth much easier. It's also easier to navigate visually when you don't have to scroll twice the size of your terminal to see the headers you sent after receiving a lengthy response.
There is a reason so many devs use UIs over CLI. Yes CLI is powerful, but the UX is generally shit for about everyone compared to a nice UI.
arpan3t@reddit
-hor man pageYou know shells have variables that you can store the headers and response in? You don’t have to scroll.
A little ironic, you apparently not knowing much about shell and dismissing the tool, in response to someone being dismissive towards a GUI-based tool they seem to not know much about.
Kendos-Kenlen@reddit
I am fine using the terminal when I have to, mainly to manage remote systems, search in the file system or check build/test results.
However, for advanced code review, graphql or http requests on a given API, I prefer using GUI specially tailored to help with what I achieve. Having the possibility to just check / uncheck headers or parameters to include, easily add scripts before or after the request to tweak the payloads, using variables and environment to switch between datapoints or deployments, and many more is just more convenient.
How much time would I need to spend to write the shell wrappers so all of this work in a convenient and time saving manners ?
With a tool like Postman, I can just open the tool, select the right env, set the collection variables I need to target the resource I want, and all my requests are ready to be used. Even better, I can share the set of requests to my peers so they can easily take over my tasks when they need to.
This is just much harder to achieve in a terminal. And yes, -h and man pages are helpful, but at the end of the day, do I really save time and brain energy by using them? Personally, I don’t.
arpan3t@reddit
If that’s all you’re using terminal for then it makes sense why you’re more comfortable with GUI apps. More power to ya! It would be harder for you to make REST API requests in a terminal
Kendos-Kenlen@reddit
I mean, I ran on exherbo for years, a distro where you configure and build everything, from your kernel to your UI. It was fun, but I’m now a professional who need to be efficient and save time, no more a student who can spend the whole day digging why the system has issues.
So yes, I do much less in the terminal than I used to. But do I feel bad about it? Certainly not. I don’t see any value in bragging about choosing the complex path over the simple one when the complex one doesn’t really bring any value or efficiency into my work.
Everyone is free to use the tool they want. But elitists that just pretend to not understand why the majority of users are using GUIs and act like they are the best for typing 3 commands, using a multiplexer, and coding with vim are just close-minded people with inferiority complex. Just let everyone use the tool they are the most efficient with, and go back to enjoy your setup if it’s that great.
KawaiiNeko-@reddit
What a collosal waste of time trying to force the shell to be an interactive API tester when a dedicated GUI exists specifically designed for this very task that is better in nearly every meaningful way.
arpan3t@reddit
Aww I’ve clearly struck a nerve here. Yeah if you never use a terminal and prefer clicking around with your mouse through a GUI app that’s great!
I do most things in the terminal so it’s already open, it’s trivial to send an HTTP request with some headers and a payload in the terminal so opening up a dedicated app, clicking around to paste my header kv, clicking another tab to type in a payload, etc… is a “colossal waste of time”
KawaiiNeko-@reddit
Seems like you don't do it that often then
arpan3t@reddit
I work with REST APIs almost daily, all from the terminal.
deja-roo@reddit
Why not just write your requests in a C++ program or assembly?
arpan3t@reddit
Because the binaries are already available to the terminal…
turbothy@reddit
What on earth are you on about? (Are you a frontend dev?) I'll always prefer the command line over some clickops shit, and I'm very much not alone.
IntelligentSpite6364@reddit
Your anecdote, even in plurality, does not add up to data
ShroomSensei@reddit
Yeah if this guy is managing dozens of API suites each with hundreds of requests and custom logic hats off to them but a GUI makes it much more manageable imo.
Sure everything I did in postman / Bruno could’ve been done using cURL, scripts, and env variables but that would be absolute hell to keep up with and version control with my team who were even less comfortable with the terminal than me.
Sounds like this guys doesn’t have a large team or lots of APIs to explore.
turbothy@reddit
If we're talking version control it becomes even more important to have it in plain text and not hidden away in a proprietary GUI. Holy vendor lock-in, Batman.
deja-roo@reddit
Postman works directly with OpenAPI files.
turbothy@reddit
Neither does the comment I'm replying to.
look@reddit
You are right, but the gui children are out in force on this thread today, downvoting anything that scares them.
nick898@reddit
My argument boils down to whatever suits your preference. If you find postman works for you that’s great! I’m not going to stop you.
If you feel like a CLI tool works just as well - that’s great too!
deja-roo@reddit
I hate Postman but it's hardly just a GUI wrapper over a CLI program.
lelanthran@reddit
Yeah, but all of those (other than command line flags) I do inside of Vim or Emacs connected to the inferior program.
You use thunderbird to read email? I use Emacs/Vim.
You use gitkraken? I use Emacs/Vim.
Need to administer a PostgreSQL instance? Emacs/Vim.
Play Tetris? Solve Towers of Hanoi? Play Snake? Emacs, Emacs and (you guessed it) Emacs.
You think that makes me in need of therapy? Well,
M-x doctorsolves that noe too, without leaving Emacs.unicodemonkey@reddit
I'm mostly working with the insides of some data processing thingy or another so I'm not really up to date about the HTTP request wrapper drama. Jupyter + convenience wrappers for requests/curl are enough for me currently. I mean, why scroll if you can retrieve the response, dissect it to retrieve the exact piece you need, and then save/share the dialog history and the result.
ACoderGirl@reddit
It is, but it's a pretty GUI. While I'm normally a CLI fan girl, sometimes a GUI is just better for the ease of use and prettier formatting/structuring.
AlternativePaint6@reddit
Unless you're manually toggling transistors on and off, then everything is just a wrapper around something else.
Serird@reddit
I'm down here manually coaxing electrons into existence, one at a time
dangderr@reddit
Electrons are just wrappers for perturbations of the electric field.
terryducks@reddit
well, i fucked that up. I have a shit load of quarks in a bucket and some of the strange ones are giving me the side eye.
jonathancast@reddit
*Electron field.
Photons are perturbations of the electric field.
awj@reddit
Let me know how the pie turns out when you get there…
roygbivasaur@reddit
What do you do with all of the positrons though?
ThisIsMyCouchAccount@reddit
Oh....I have some ideas.
noViableSolution@reddit
that's on the backlog waiting to be refined
Eksekk@reddit
Real programmers move electrons manually using electronic needle.
lelanthran@reddit
Noob! I use butterflies.
arpan3t@reddit
That’s cute! Us actual programmers are down here manipulating qubits
OMG_A_CUPCAKE@reddit
Relevant XKCD
nirreskeya@reddit
The browser one I use literally shows the equivalent curl command for everything you do, trying to coax me back to the terminal. And arguably I should but I'm just slightly lazy about it.
tooclosetocall82@reddit
The gui is nice for twiddling with things and looking at the output. Also it’s didn’t use to be the monstrosity it’s become. I tend to use it mostly out of habit now.
baodrate@reddit
hurl actually covers postman's use cases directly (capturing responses, writing tests, etc.)
Affectionate-Egg7566@reddit
What? Why? You can just do that in bash, or any programming language really
baodrate@reddit
Did you click the link? It very clearly explains the "why?".
Obviously, you can call curl directly, parse the output response json/xml, capture some arbitrary value (assuming jq), measure performance, and make assertions against everything using sh script. But it wouldn't be as ergonomic as 5 lines of hurl.
And doing everything properly (parsing exit codes for different failure states, capturing the stderr of the various tools to make sure you report useful error messages, etc.) is straight forward but tedious and noisy (10x if you're actually doing this in sh script rather than a proper programming language)
Affectionate-Egg7566@reddit
I disagree.
baodrate@reddit
and you're wrong
Unfollowedusers@reddit
Fuck, that site is everything the internet should be. Not an ad, not a please take my cookies, just a god dam website !!
Also dam i am here as a passing intrest and have used postman, god dam i now feel not crazy for think this is making everything much more difficult than it needs to be !
Throwaway-asfasfasf@reddit
It seems to be inspired by motherfuckingwebsite.com and by its follow-ups goodmotherfuckingwebsite, bettermotherfuckingwebsite and bestmotherfuckingwebsite
OphioukhosUnbound@reddit
Yes, but HTTPie or XH (basically rust version of httpie) are nicer to work with than curl, imo. Just better syntax. But same idea.
iamapizza@reddit
I love that the author made a webspite just for this
Unfollowedusers@reddit
This is one of my favorite random sites just because of that line
Up there with this one
://howmanydayssincemontaguestreetbridgehasbeenhit.com
FewBlackberry9195@reddit
I mean it's fun, but let's be real here saving collections of requests, better UI in general, etc. curl isn't a good replacement.
4r73m190r0s@reddit
Ofc. You should do it in Neovim.
EntroperZero@reddit
Why even use cURL, just ssh your requests to the server.
deja-roo@reddit
Spoken like a pussy that doesn't know how to use telnet
EntroperZero@reddit
I can use telnet fine, it's doing the elliptical curve math in my head that's the tricky part.
deja-roo@reddit
Ehhhh no. curl is not a replacement for Postman. Or a Postman equivalent.
SubliminalPoet@reddit
Even better just import requests and play in your REPL
Dunge@reddit
"it's already on your machine", no, not on Windows
fletku_mato@reddit
If you're on Windows, then you have bigger problems to solve first.
Dunge@reddit
I wouldn't trade Visual Studio for nothing
neithere@reddit
Are you still in 2003?
modernkennnern@reddit
I would say Windows has some number of good things about it - software compatibility through years of market share easily being the biggest one - but the Desktop Environment is certainly not one of them.
KawaiiNeko-@reddit
The bloated mess that is Visual Studio? Seriously?
AdamAnderson320@reddit
On Windows, you have Powershell's
Invoke-WebRequest(aliasiwr) andInvoke-RestMethod(aliasirm). I've been writing Powershell scripts with these for years and regularly preach the benefits to my teammates. Some of them have started to pick it up, too!gmes78@reddit
cURL is included with Windows 10 and newer. Just disable the
curlPowerShell alias (addRemove-Item alias:curlto your PowerShell profile), or typecurl.exeexplicitly.HedonistMomus@reddit
I get it, you can of course, but that does not mean better UX. The guy mentions
jq, lol. Hard to grasp.dangerbird2@reddit
I mean, jq isn't that hard to use as long as you don't do overly complex transformations. And yeah, the fact that a small AI model running on your macbook can generate any curl command you can think of makes these "premium" API client services dead as a dodo
HedonistMomus@reddit
Dunno, usually have a hard time with it, eg. arbitrary data coming up the pipe being chewed up by jq. I don't have fun at all with multi-line cli commands.
dangerbird2@reddit
I guess probably have stockholm syndrome from using it for devops. It's a lifesaver with kubernetes lol
j1436go@reddit
And write integration tests for your own API with all the power that comes with your programming language of choice. Problem solved.
RScrewed@reddit
Damn, reminds me of Maddox. Awesome.
AuroraFireflash@reddit
I rather use something slightly higher level like Python / PowerShell 7. Bash/zsh are nice, but working with full blown objects is nicer.
Inf3rn0_munkee@reddit
That have me a good chuckle. It's essentially what I've been trying to tell my team and the company but they got too used to postman from when it was free.
f1da@reddit
Running Postman in Citrix made me just use curl instead.
Successful_Bowl2564@reddit (OP)
og one.
Conscious_Meal_7766@reddit
For me the breaking point was when Postman killed the offline scratchpad and started requiring a sign-in just to fire a GET. Made .http files in VS Code my home that same week and haven't looked back.
extreme4all@reddit
You did what? Am i missing some vscode feature or?
Empanatacion@reddit
Insomnia did the same thing and jacked around with their UI repeatedly until it's this unintuitive mess.
azsqueeze@reddit
The creator of insomnia is back and created yaak. It's free for personal use
orygin@reddit
It's also unusable with enough requests. The UI goes to a crawl because it must serialize everything to JS land
mothzilla@reddit
Have you tried rewriting it in Rust?
BogdanPradatu@reddit
I'll prompt my team of AI agents to do it overnight. Tomorrow morning it should be done.
coyoteazul2@reddit
it is tomorrow. where is my postman killer app!
Sigmatics@reddit
Finally everyone can be a manager
danstermeister@reddit
Claude? Maybe make that two nights.
mothzilla@reddit
Make no mistakes!
orygin@reddit
It's already in Rust, but it works with Tauri so the rendering is done through web components.
darthcoder@reddit
Rust ain't GUI yet.
VictoryMotel@reddit
Those wacky js devs, they never learn.
azsqueeze@reddit
Aw damn, I just started using it for some simple stuff. So for it's been aight for my needs
travelinzac@reddit
Just use curl
BogdanPradatu@reddit
Never understood the need for postman. Python, bash, curl. You have all the free tools you need. What, you need a GUI for sending requests?
space-to-bakersfield@reddit
There's a lot of good QoL features in these apps like env level variables so you can flip a switch and hit a different env with all your saved requests and also post-request scripts that can save id's from response payloads so you can easily chain requests. Like you create an entity, then its id gets saved into a var your get request uses so you can just run that and get the entity you just created without fiddling around with ids. Sure you can use curl but these apps for sure speed up your edit-run-debug cycle and that's not nothing.
Nesogra@reddit
It’s also easier for testers that aren’t as comfortable with coding. I personally prefer to use Python for api testing so I can turn it into a regression script afterwards but most of my coworkers really prefer to use a gui. It’s really remarkable to me how far people will go and how much extra work they are willing to do just to avoid the tiniest bit of coding.
space-to-bakersfield@reddit
Extra work as in...opening the app?
Nesogra@reddit
The extra work is in the data setup and maintenance, not the tool use. We tend to use APIs that service many different use cases so when testing only a small number of fields in the request need to be modified for our purposes but the rest still has to be included for the request to go through. In Python I can just use code to change those few fields for each case instead of having to copy the same request over and over again. When something changes it’s easy to update the few base requests instead of having to modify a ton of separate json files.
space-to-bakersfield@reddit
If you need that kind of thoroughness you're kinda entering e2e test territory.
Nesogra@reddit
That's pretty much my team's job. We do some manually testing but there has always been a push to automate everything as fast as we can.
tom_swiss@reddit
Ok, that makes sense. I use curl for the initial messing around and by the time it gets complicated I'm already developing code and futz with the API there, so I never understood the need for these tools, but if you're not a coder it makes sense.
pm_plz_im_lonely@reddit
Don't want to remember the command line parameters.
WASDx@reddit
I recently installed bruno as a replacement for "text file with a bunch of curl's to copy paste". It's way more practical when exploring a new API, trying different json post bodies etc. and handling auth.
Sadzeih@reddit
Httpie is really nice just as a wrapper to simplify use
FullPoet@reddit
And what happens when yaak does it?
Feel me once etc. Like someone else said - just use curl and a text editor.
nemec@reddit
The creator of Yaak will bail and create a new one you can adopt /s
azsqueeze@reddit
Probably
FullPoet@reddit
something something shaving yaks...
varinator@reddit
There is also a fork called Insomnium on github that i use fir couple of years now.
pjmlp@reddit
The only reason I still have Insomia installed is that our IT hasn't yet forbidded it, like with Postman.
However there are plenty of alternatives, it is just me being lazy, as I already do most of the stuff with HTTP files, and other alternatives.
deja-roo@reddit
I would like to hear more about this
bokonator@reddit
I think it's this : https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client
That's what I've been using for 5 years at least.
CUNT_PUNCHER_9000@reddit
https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/205433
deja-roo@reddit
Hahaha that's a great link to post to that comment. Thank you.
I'll get the extension.
CUNT_PUNCHER_9000@reddit
I'm always wary of 3rd party extensions, but looks interesting
Niagr@reddit
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.rest-client
deja-roo@reddit
Yeah I started looking into it after I made that comment. Postman is still what I use but I hate it so would like to replace it if the learning curve isn't too bad. This might do it.
winky9827@reddit
And for JetBrains...
Tiny_Effect_7024@reddit
God this was so annoying. Always wondered why they did that.
Salty_Dugtrio@reddit
Can't as easily track data/usage without a user login that requires you to agree to ToS that lets them harvest all your juicy data.
Tiny_Effect_7024@reddit
sounds plausible
jfp1992@reddit
Postman enshittified fast
winky9827@reddit
.http files are the way. In VS Code, there's "REST client", in JetBrains, they're natively supported via a shared plugin.
Carighan@reddit
Yeah my work pays for IntelliJ anyways, I just use their rest client. Being able to check the non-security-relevant parts of the REST files in with the code of each service helps a lot, anyways.
beefcat_@reddit
I did exactly the same thing. I lost some actual work when Postman pulled that shitty stunt. Fuck Postman.
xcdesz@reddit
Not just that. They locked people out of their offline endpoints and held them hostage by forcing them to register / sign in to get those endpoints back. Then they also uploaded user private data such as access tokens held in "environment" stores and uploaded those stores to their insecure site. This screwed my dev team over at work who were working with sensitive data. One of the worst 180's from a formerly useful open piece of software I've experienced. Total scumbag company as far as I'm concerned.
StillAnAss@reddit
I didn't know that existed but just looked into it. Awesome, thanks!
GBcrazy@reddit
You don't need to sign-in to fire any request in Postman.
There is a 'continue without signing in' button, you just need to have good eyes to see it
yupidup@reddit
I code my api calls with, you know, code
Xatraxalian@reddit
I abandoned Postman when they started bitching about having to log in when at the same time their GUI started to feel like a phone app. I'm not even talking about the performance yet. I just want something simple with which I can send an API request and see the output. When writing an API in C#, Swagger is more than enough at this point (and even that feels often convoluted).
sime@reddit
This is exactly why Free and Open Source Software matters.
zzbzq@reddit
Because it’s all rug pull bait and switch scams?
UVRaveFairy@reddit
Well back in the day, when microsoft brought github, the stench let alone writing was on the wall..
lunacraz@reddit
i mean, when OS projects become a second job without any sort of income, i can empathize when people try to actually make it their worthwhile
this attitude of OSS being this faceless stream of free software for all is pretty toxic and people are being taken advantage of
i'm never going to fault that
Main-Transition-9666@reddit
that is their intent from the very start. it is just that they hide their intention to profit from it to get lure users. when they have enough, then the enshittification begins.
everyone who writes open source expects to profit from it, if given the opportunity. can't blame them for that, but we can blame them for hiding their true intentions.
jka76@reddit
I understand that. But IMHO you should pay for comfort. Not for what used to be very basic functionality.
Ghi102@reddit
I have been a victim of enshitification far more in the closed source world compared to FOSS.
zzbzq@reddit
Well I’m not trying to hold up proprietary software as virtuous, but I am trying to take FOSS worship down a peg. They can both be bad. And “victim” is a strong word for enshittification when we’re comparing it to actual scams. We had some popular FOSS c# testing library steal everybody’s email and sell it to advertisers. The nice thing about buying licensed software is it gives you terms and someone to sue. That’s why CTO keep buying it instead of exclusively getting free stuff, and even FOSS they usually pay someone for it anyway.
gimpwiz@reddit
Yes, one of the biggest advantages to buying software from a company (which is usually, but not always proprietary and closed) is that you have contracts, lawyers, mailing addresses, execs can shake hands, companies and individuals can be named in a lawsuit, SLAs can be pointed to, someone else can be blamed, etc etc.
The downsides are myriad and obvious too. Some of the downsides (like, you can't just go figure out what the issue is and fix it yourself) only apply to more sophisticated organizations; Bob who owns the hardware store is not going to be debugging his receipt printer drivers no matter how open source they are. Some of the downsides are getting out-lawyered by your supplier, and now Oracle owns your balls and you need to ask three lawyers for permission to take a piss. So, win some, lose some.
Carighan@reddit
I will say one often overlooked upside is that when working at a company using paid software they pay for is that it's... frankly not my problem.
I am 10% less productive because of a shitty tool I have to use? Well, I'll regularly point that out, and other than that I got no problem with being 10% less productive. Not my decision to be less productive, and importantly, not mine to fix. If I am free to pick my own choice of tools, I am responsible for making that a decent choice, and I have to fix any issues with such as selection.
I got enough shit on my mind already. I don't need "optimize my digital workspace" on top of all the existing ones, tbh.
gimpwiz@reddit
There's definitely a lot of upside to being able to just blame someone else. VPs especially love this because when your system is down to some extremely strange interaction in your home-brewed linux install and home-written software, you're on the hook; when Microsoft's servers are down, you tell the CEO that you have a 3 hour SLA and your contract includes penalties, so now you just wait for them to perform or you get your lawyers on the call and let them deal with it. Having a good strong finger to point can be a real career saver. On the flip side, if you pick the wrong vendor, well, see above: Oracle et al.
As a line engineer / programmer like you and I and most others here, if the VP signs the contract and we use a tool now, it's out of our hands. It's our problem, but also it isn't. A lot of it is, like you said, an attitude problem. You point out the tool isn't very good and then you just get back to work, doing your thing, doing the best you can with what you have; it's not your responsibility to find, quality, install, teach, use, etc a new tool.
All that said, I do much prefer just throwing linux on a box and doing whatever I want with it, when that's reasonable to do. :)
FlyingBishop@reddit
the terms say they can do whatever they want with your email. but it's closed source so you have no proof anyway
gimpwiz@reddit
Companies (operating in the same jurisdiction...) are subject to discovery in lawsuits, so you might be surprised what can be proven if you have the money to spend on lawyer fees.
Romanmir@reddit
But were those closed source applications *ever* open source?
It’s been my experience that the first step towards enshittication is usually moving to closed source.
Carighan@reddit
Yeah exactly, most of those started as FOSS. And then got sold (understandable, at some point you as the maintainer got a home to pay off or a family to feed or both), and from there it was downhill. Until a new FOSS tool comes along.
svish@reddit
Because you can fork it and do what you want when they rug pull?
imforit@reddit
This is exactly why Free and Open Source Software matters
kaoD@reddit
Obligatory Hurl link
https://hurl.dev/
hp77reddits@reddit
how does sharing request look like?
kaoD@reddit
You commit to git repo.
JeSuisAnhil@reddit
https://github.com/Orange-OpenSource/hurl/commit/0a440083833cf465f980d276f8e1a4735a20f61f - that's a hard pass, dawg.
deja-roo@reddit
What? Why?
JeSuisAnhil@reddit
Do I need to spell it out? 'Cause they use Claude and/or Copilot AND attempt to hide it.
deja-roo@reddit
So?
By literally labeling it with a comment in that commit? I think you have misdiagnosed or misunderstood what's going on there.
They're only git ignoring the worktree stuff that shouldn't be committed to git. You're supposed to not check in those directories.
JeSuisAnhil@reddit
That is also the only commit mentioning LLMs. Usually vibecoded commits have that
Co-Authored-Byremark for transparency. There's no genAI policy inCONTRIBUTING.mdeither.You asked, I answered. That is a factor for me. I'm not here to convert you.
deja-roo@reddit
A dev from the project already explained to you that they have different policies per dev in how they use LLMs.
Commits don't need to mention LLMs. Nobody said they were just "vibecoding" everything. There are other ways to use LLMs. You're just making wild claims based on the fact you don't know what they're doing. That's not a great place to start from.
jcamiel@reddit
Hi maintainer of Hurl here. We don't want to hide anything, for the moment we're not having the same configuration/prompt/skill among the 3 maintainers and we dont want to settle for the comment a common configuration in the repo, that's all. We're using LLM code, as normal code: reviewed with care, small modifications, focus and test.
moustachedelait@reddit
He would like to check in his Claude md? Or maybe he's special 🤣
JeSuisAnhil@reddit
That commit ignores directories.
CLAUDE.mdis supposed to be in the repository's root: https://github.com/nushell/nushell/blob/main/CLAUDE.mdIf you are gonna resort to personal attacks, at least get things right, so you don't make a fool out of yourself.
kondorb@reddit
You just hard passed the total of 100% of software made in the world.
JeSuisAnhil@reddit
LOL. LMAO, even. What is this delusion?
kondorb@reddit
Every single codebase now uses LLMs in some fashion.
JeSuisAnhil@reddit
Bold claim, care to back it up?
AdUnlucky9870@reddit
switched to .http files in vscode like two years ago and genuinely forgot postman existed until this thread. the real crisis is that we ever normalized signing into a cloud service to send a curl request
pohart@reddit
Wow. I never thought of just simple html forms on disk for this. I feel like that should have been more obvious than curl
bluegrassclimber@reddit
lately I'm just having claude do CURL commands and/or whipping up a node or python script to test endpoints for me
maxip89@reddit
Bruno. No server sending bs.
cd7k@reddit
Except their rug-pulling nonsense.
Zeragamba@reddit
what rug pull?
cd7k@reddit
When I started using it and purchased the Golden Edition they claimed to remain awesome. Of course, as soon as they became mildly popular, SUBSCRIPTIONS. Here's at least two things that have changed.
You can read more here: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno/discussions/3486#discussioncomment-12699109
Prynhawn_Da@reddit
I'm mixed on this.
I can understand that naivety probably led to those views, and reality is different.
However, they seem to have grown and grown the team, but I always get the feel they are just amateurish, and basic things don't seem well understood.
Successful_Bowl2564@reddit (OP)
in the article the author is super critical of it though.
really_not_unreal@reddit
The author is disingenuous at best in their review. Bruno is fine.
ifitiw@reddit
I will need to give Bruno a try again, but last time I tried it (a year and a half ago) it was absolutely terrible for my brain. Seemed made by someone who clearly had a very different mental model to mine with regards to how UX should work. Nothing clicked, it felt like I was using software from an alternative timeline of UX development, or perhaps the planet ZorgIdork
I really hope it’s better because I’d love to get the team off the Postman subscription and throw some of that money at an open-source project instead.
GuaranteePotential90@reddit
What I can say is that this space is indeed filled with "clones", which one the one hand shows how powerful Postman was. The main problem with these SaaS tools is that as every SaaS, their mandate is to keep people spending time inside their app and of course eventually also pay. I think that something that has played a role here is AI and how much one can produce. So in a way, testing an API can not be more expensive than building actual code.
Anyway, I think that devs will and do figure things out in this weird space. From my side, with my team we built over 1K APIs in the past 2 years and tried almost every tool. Th result is that we built something of our own that we initially used for us and now open sourced for the world to see: https://github.com/VoidenHQ/voiden
Nicolay77@reddit
Is it like a Jupyter notebook for APIs?
GuaranteePotential90@reddit
this comparison is not unfair at all! I have been exploring jupyter notebooks when someone said something similar and yes, some common ideas and concepts but indeed, Voiden is tailored for APIs,
jejacks00n@reddit
Voiden is on my list of things to check out. Thanks for the reminder!
GuaranteePotential90@reddit
awesome, happy to remind you :) actually this is a good time because we had a big release that includes our take on the collection runner + the ability to run multiple requests in the same file. (for example in an order flow (create - pay - confirm), or a full CRUD cycle in one place). The file effectively becomes an executable flow that you can use to run one request, or the entire sequence end-to-end.
curious what you think when you have the chance to try out.
jejacks00n@reddit
That sounds cool. I’ve written a bunch of tests (specs) over the years to do this kind of thing using VCR (a recording and replaying kind of tool for network requests/responses). I’ve always kicked around the idea of having these concepts of defining the requests and then being able to use them in practice and in specs too. Anyway, side topic. Thanks for your project, I look forward to checking it out.
really_not_unreal@reddit
I used to use insomnia, which has become very bloated, and found that Bruno's UI mostly made sense to me. A few buttons are in weird places, but after a few days I got used to it.
dweezil22@reddit
I had a giant Postman collection for my hobby stuff that I tried migrating to Bruno, half of it failed. Then I realized it's 2026 and I can just have an AI agent read the postman config and port it into utility function that sits along my project and it works 10x better anyway. Meanwhile at work when I asked about installing Postman everyone was like "what's wrong with you? Why aren't you using curl?"
So yeah. I don't need Postman or Bruno anymore. I'm honestly going to be surprised if this class of software sticks around at scale much longer, at least paid, it's a very strange Goldilocks zone that would require enough tech expertise to actually want it, but also a fear of CLI's that I'm seeing even novices shrug off in this age of non-programmer vibecoding.
fiskfisk@reddit
How do you manage to get to "supercritical" from what they wrote? They had a few points they thought of as missing from Bruno, but other than that, where's the part where they're "super critical"?
loeffel-io@reddit
Kulala!
Exalted_Coattail@reddit
Officially on a cat appreciation spree.
mascotbeaver104@reddit
Basically all postman functionality I can think of can be directly replaced by a single file and a script- if you have curl on your system, the core functionality of Postman (including the test suites) can be 100% emulated and then some with like, 5 lines of bash
Froztnova@reddit
I've learned the pleasure of just using curl for basic API testing as well. I think I'd want a graphical client for more complex things myself because I'm not a wizard, but otherwise it gets the job done.
dvhh@reddit
basically curl everything
Interesting-Bad-9498@reddit
Good take.
Feels like the problem isn’t just the number of tools, it’s how fragmented everything has become. You end up spending more time stitching things together than actually building.
The tools solve individual problems, but the overall developer experience still feels messy.
IMP4283@reddit
Is there a solid FOSS alternative?
chucker23n@reddit
The only "crisis" here is that Postman was once valued at $5.6B. That's not a typo. I realize Postman has some nice features like collaboration, but at the end of the day, it's just an HTTP client.
As for what I use, it depends a lot on the scope.
curlorhttpwill do. Pipe them tojq, and you get some basic JSON parsing..httpsupport. JetBrains, for example, will even do things like render image results inline.m0j0m0j@reddit
Your “it’s just an http client” comment reminds me of that guy who said “meh, it’s just rsync” in comments under the dropbox launch
chucker23n@reddit
Fair, although in that case, what they missed is how much friction Dropbox removed, suddenly making a syncing folder something the mass market could use.
Typing a URL into Postman is more interactive compared to curl, but you’re not really expanding the user base much at all.
Ok-Kaleidoscope5627@reddit
I stopped using postman and other tools except curl when LLMs became a thing.
They're even better at removing the friction than postman.
podgladacz00@reddit
Not 5 billion worth of friction
Catenane@reddit
Speak for yourself. My grandpa learned how to use the pornhub API via postman and now every button you hit in his house has a customized porn moan, and his wifi captive portal has a hentai anubis logo
uhdoy@reddit
Your grandpa fucking rules
Catenane@reddit
Tbh they're all dead so this is an imagination grandpa
Carighan@reddit
The speculative market really is a blight upon the world and traders and those enabling them with their billions must needs be purged. IMO.
heavymetalpanda@reddit
If you like HTTPie, but it feels sluggish might I suggest xh.
Suitable-Turnover597@reddit
many developers now develop directly with documentation and use the built-in swagger UI, so the need for Postman and similar solutions has become much lower
S4nsa3301@reddit
It’s honestly a classic case of a great tool becoming too "corporate" for its own good. Developers are jumping ship because Postman shifted from a simple, fast utility to a heavy, subscription-hungry platform that forces everything into the cloud, which is a nightmare for privacy and version control. People are craving "local-first" tools like Bruno or Hoppscotch that let you keep your API collections right in your Git repo without the bloat it just feels like the community is ready to get back to basics and away from the constant upselling!
Fooftook@reddit
Enshittification grows! I’m getting tired. I don’t know how much longer I can be in this industry.
Marble_Wraith@reddit
It seems like this guy wants the "systemd of API clients".
Tools are supposed to be composable. Hammer for nails, screwdriver for screws, socket wrench + spanners for nuts and bolts... etc.
Even systemd breaks itself down into different modules internally and doesn't claim to be "1 tool"... tho' it has been trying to "rule them all". Sorry, couldn't resist 😅
Anywho. From the comfort of my terminal, none of this affects me.
Sisaroth@reddit
A few years ago a colleague recommended me the REST Client plugin for vs code and I never considered something else since then. I'm mostly a microsoft guy (.NET dev), but I like the linux way of everything just being plain text files.
warmuuh@reddit
Exactly the reason i wrote https://github.com/warmuuh/milkman Open source, never will require sign in. Even more features than only http...
Hot-Employ-3399@reddit
I dropped it because it was horrific how bloated it was. It took several seconds to load. WTF. It's not a CAD.
Loading vscode filled with extensions, including one to do requests, was significantly faster.
WhitelabelDnB@reddit
When I got fed up with Postman, I got on a call with one of my coworkers and we looked at every option on the market. We could not believe how much competition there was for such a simple product.
My needs were simple: File based collections, external secret management, git friendly, sharable and collaborative.
Literally everyone gates at least one of those behind a paywall. Bruno were the closest, and even they gate using an external key vault behind a subscription. They had to edit their company mission statement when they announced this change. And their vscode extension doesn't support OAuth? What!?
So we made Missio. It's a minimal REST client for vscode. It's 100% FOSS forever. You can connect to a key vault without a paywall. It's not got feature parity with Postman or Bruno yet, but it's enough to cover my use cases as an integration developer, and we're adding more and more features as we need them.
Some cool stuff that Missio does that other apps don't do.
Auth tokens are environment scoped, so if you change environment it will reauth oauth and not use a token for the wrong environment. Postman fails this test.
You can auth with a CLI command, eg using az to get a user scoped token so you don't need an app registration to test. This is all automated too.
You can integrate with key vaults that resolve using environment variables, so you can have separate key vaults per environment. This means you never need secrets in the collections, and anyone can clone the repo and just run them if they have RBAC assignments for the vaults.
It uses the Bruno Open Collection standard, which is completely open and file based. Git friendly.
Again, totally free. We will never paywall any of this. It's not done yet but we are working on it and we would welcome submissions, contributions, and feedback.
propagated@reddit
this is very neat, thanks for sharing! are there other external key vaults on the roadmap besides Azure? we actually use LastPass Vault for some secrets
WhitelabelDnB@reddit
At the moment we are only adding support for things we personally use. Keeper may get added.
Would love some people in the AWS and GCP landscapes to contribute.
It doesn't look like LastPass vault has a secrets API. There are some wrappers people have built around the CLI.
I think the more likely path is that we will add scripting support with the ability to execute CLI commands in the extension host, like we do for CLI auth.
That's a more generic target that would allow people to use anything with a CLI.
ford1man@reddit
Because developers can write and commit fetch scripts just fine, thank you. Fetch scripts don't take away features you'd been relying on in a failed effort to squeeze a couple more bucks out of you.
Illustrious_Bid_5123@reddit
Same herehad to move to FOSS after a closed-source tool started requiring a subscription just to use core features. At least with open source, you know the code stays yours.
eibrahim@reddit
What pushed me away wasn't just login walls, it was losing plain diffable artifacts in the workflow.
A checked-in .http file or curl script gives you reviewability, reproducibility, and a paper trail when an endpoint changes. GUI clients are nice for exploration, but once a request matters, I want it living next to the codebase so anyone on the team can rerun it without importing some mystery collection.
Mountain-King-6732@reddit
i agree - and i think thats what the new breed of api tooling is fixing - https://github.com/voidenhq/voiden being one of them - its not only doing the everything locally - but also allows you to use real runtimes for scripting - like python, shell and others.
darthcoder@reddit
Another electron beast?
jedi4545@reddit
Bro just use Bruno it’s fine.
Nicolay77@reddit
If using JSON Path on the responses is useful for your workflow, there's this one:
https://www.apikulture.com/
Open source, MIT license.
blindmikey@reddit
Just gonna drop this here... https://posting.sh/
stfm@reddit
Doesnt support oauth2
darthcoder@reddit
Because postman went to subscription wnshitification.
DropTheBeatAndTheBas@reddit
cant developers just build their own tools with AI quickly now and even more bespoke for their job
johnnygalat@reddit
When you use tools to build things, you just want tools to work - you don't want to have another layer of complexity to pay attention to and maintain.
And AI generated slop is hard to maintain.
EveryQuantityEver@reddit
Not to mention, using common tools means it’s easier for new contributors to get up to speed
Fisher9001@reddit
It's just a freaking API calling tool. If your process suffered at all because of it, something went extremely wrong on the end of whoever designed that process.
SikhGamer@reddit
https://hurl.dev commit them into Git; fin.
chat-lu@reddit
I never adopted postman, I don’t see what this gives me that isn’t simpler with xh that is inspired by httpie.
DL72-Alpha@reddit
" Bruno’s UI lacks polish, and migrating is a headache – scripts often break because the JavaScript sandbox isn’t the same as Postman’s "
The problem is Javascript, and has been from the earliest days of the Internet. It's just bigger and more bloated now.
Big-Masterpiece-9581@reddit
Bruno is the best
mothzilla@reddit
I still use Postman. It's fine.
hungry4pie@reddit
Is there any reason why you can’t just use: curl, powershell (invoke rest method), whatever python or node do?
gmiller123456@reddit
It'd get the job done, but a tool designed for the job makes things easier. Kinda like why use an IDE where edlin would work.
little_breeze@reddit
I might be a caveman, but I've been using this inside neovim: https://github.com/oysandvik94/curl.nvim
cupcakeheavy@reddit
The built in HTTP client in IntelliJ is pretty nice. Not free, but nice.
Mountain-King-6732@reddit
i think its nice - and Voiden (https://github.com/voidenhq/voiden) basically builds on the same philosophy and adds other benefits like reusable blocks (like you can use the same body in multiple places, override it just like we do in function overloading - and it has some useful tweaks like deep merge etc).
But essentially allows you to have everything in markdown - so not just API requests - but also the documentation around it - just in single file, version controlled. Infact - you will see so many inspirations from Jet brains philosophy as i long time user (10+ years) of IntelliJ, and other tools from the jetbrains ecosystem.
But instead of being a plugin with only "testing" an api - and btw - if the goal is just to test an api - you can do it with curl. but if you want to organize them and reuse them and document them, share and publish and all the other things that you want to do its something worth checking out.
CpnStumpy@reddit
I must be the outlier, I just build a stupid client class with a function for each API call and axios.. it's like 1-2 lines of code per API call. A CLI can run it to do whatever I want and it's infinitely easier to maintain than digging through postman's endless complexity
fill-me-up-scotty@reddit
I do the same but using Go’s http client. Pretty trivial to write.
ThisIsMyCouchAccount@reddit
Okay. But here's the thing.
I don't want to.
CpnStumpy@reddit
Then do it in postman UIs if you find that easier. Or Bruno yaml. I find this the easiest 🤷
ThisIsMyCouchAccount@reddit
I use JetBrains' built in client.
CpnStumpy@reddit
Yeah, I've done it with go also for a go team to be able to use it, I've done it with python similarly as well.. again, anyone who can program can trivially do this and it will be far easier to deal with than postmadness
coder-of-the-web@reddit
Why even use axios instead of native fetch?
flanger001@reddit
NATIVE FETCH GANG
fill-me-up-scotty@reddit
supply chain adrenaline rush
CpnStumpy@reddit
Probably just old habit, native API request library used to be more complicated and messy vs axios, modern fetch API is probably just as simple as axios 🤷
TistelTech@reddit
I like Jupyter notebooks with the python `requests` library. docs and runnable code. open source.
amroamroamro@reddit
the landscape of http libraries in python has its own drama; see requests vs niquests, httpx vs httpxyz, ...
https://old.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/1rl5kuq/anyone_know_whats_up_with_httpx/
usrlibshare@reddit
Because we hate enshittification. No, I will not use a libcurl-frontend that wants to send my data to the cloud and ask me for a fuckin subscription!
And btw. this runs in my terminal: https://posting.sh/
Infamous_Guard5295@reddit
yeah postman went full enterprise garbage mode. switched to bruno a while back and honestly it's everything postman used to be before they decided to lock basic features behind paywalls. runs locally, git-friendly, no forced cloud sync nonsense... exactly what you'd expect from a decent api client lol
TheGRS@reddit
It sucks but I guess everyone has to get their bag and I don’t really bemoan that either. A lot of the shenanigans in software dev I now see as ways to extract wealth, and with the system we have I cynically think that’s just the best you can do sometimes. I’m not changing the world with my library of postman scripts in the service of testing our auth microservice.
Open source tools are the way to go, and if a team can maintain that along with their startup built on top of those tools, I see that as the best of both worlds. That means there’s always an escape hatch if a group decides to change their terms to pure wealth extraction from corps. The rest of us can fork or move on to the new thing.
joashua99@reddit
Fine. I'll do it myself.
ewigebose@reddit
Ai slop article
Postman is garbage now but I need something less-technical users can grasp for some use cases. We’re evaluating hoppscotch, yaak and bruno for now.
Personally I just write quick scripts for API munging. When you have large request bodies with many variables etc. I find the simplicity of Python or Elixir script easier to work with than mucking around with curl.
Paradox@reddit
Because postman and its clones started wanting $30/mo for a glorified CURL ui
SchrodingerSemicolon@reddit
I'm really trying to get off the Postman train, I'm very very done with the almost daily updates to features I thoroughly don't care about (AI AI AI AI).
I just wanted a replacement that's also... well, fully compatible with it.
I'm trying to migrate to Bruno. It imported my collections 99% fine, but the other 1%¹ requires me to either remove functionality, or change how it work in a way that's specific to Bruno. That's not a problem if I'm the only user, but it is when it's something I want to share with teammates or customers.
It's just simpler to assume everyone else is using the most popular tool.
sligit@reddit
Am I the only one that finds it weird that humans are regularly interacting directly with APIs except for testing?
wildjokers@reddit
Well, APIs need to be tested, so you need a http client of some kind.
sligit@reddit
Sure. I didn't mean these shouldn't exist, just that they increasingly seem to be being used in lieu of an actual UI.
mtranda@reddit
Are there that many humans directly interacting with APIs? Because it's new to me.
sligit@reddit
I've been coming across it more and more often yeah. Personally I prefer curl for testing because it can easily be run remotely when needed but I get using something like Postman for testing. But yeah, in the last couple of years I keep coming across places that have people using these GUI API tools in place of a proper interface.
quisatz_haderah@reddit
wait, isn't postman for testing?
sojuz151@reddit
Best experience for me had been the built into Intelij http client
No_Kaleidoscope7022@reddit
Is that good? I mean can it add certificates an also does it show output in better way?
sojuz151@reddit
Biggest advantage for me is that it is good enough, but also inside the IDE. Same window, same repo, etc
rjksn@reddit
Because they all require accounts to sell our data.
Worth_Trust_3825@reddit
what the fuck is an api tooling, let alone its crisis? abi going away?
hotl3@reddit
Hey I've been working on an local first alternative called Nidra.dev if anyone wanted to try it out. It's free except for the team sharing and testing functions. I was going to wait until I got my code signing cert to expose it to the public but I guess this is a good time if anyone wants to try it out and give it a spin
orygin@reddit
Not open source?
unknown_r00t@reddit
Or Resterm (TUI):
https://github.com/unkn0wn-root/resterm
MelodicTelephone5388@reddit
curl is life
wellanticipated@reddit
I had a bad interviewing experience with them and no longer feel bad. 💁♀️
Free_Basil_6506@reddit
Interesting read. The shift away from Postman-style tools is real. I've seen teams move to:
curl + scripts - Simple, reproducible, no GUI overhead
HTTP files in IDEs - JetBrains and VS Code have native support now
OpenAPI specs + codegen - Generate clients directly from API definitions
The main pain points with Postman clones: - Collections are hard to version control properly - Environment variables get messy across teams - The "sync" features often break or create conflicts - Heavy Electron apps eating RAM
For internal APIs, a simple HTTP file or curl script in the repo is often enough. No need for a full GUI client.
shifting_drifting@reddit
Crisis?
FredTillson@reddit
Logging in is a crisis and a betrayal. Apparently.
hm9408@reddit
Gotta make you click on the article somehow
rangorn@reddit
Visual Studio has an integrated http tester sp sometimes I use that. Also with AI it is so much easier to generate E2E-tests.
flanger001@reddit
Because they keep adding fucking paywalls! So many of these things are finished products and then they get investors.
w3npigsfly@reddit
ApiQuest open source UI and newman like ci runner
Laicbeias@reddit
Because its broken. I cna access all of my fucking links anymore. The login doesnt work. Like its not working properly and its bullshit. No one needs this shit to be in the cloud. When you started using it no one said. Oh would be great if thst crap is all in the cloud not on my local pc where i work. And oh it needs login
Ghi102@reddit
I personally have started using Hoppscotch as a replacement. But all we really need is a fancy UI curl, Bruno's git features are just overkill for us.
mtetrode@reddit
Because an executable of 0,5 Gb to execute an http request is a bit much.
Absolute_Enema@reddit
Haha, random babashka repl files go brr.
SoCalThrowAway7@reddit
I just use python requests do everything I used to use postman for
pjmlp@reddit
Electron crap, followed by SaaS only, without any control of what they do with company critical data used to test private APIs.
Nowdays I use a mix of IDE tooling, HTTP files, curl, or plain scripting.
lood9phee2Ri@reddit
because people keep trying to make them into closed-source nonsense subscription profit centres
skidmark_zuckerberg@reddit
I always used the HTTP client in IntelliJ. Was a pretty big user of Postman until I started doing that a few years back.
swoleherb@reddit
Why wouldn't you write proper intergration tests in your lanaguage/framework of choice?
lelanthran@reddit
I prompted claude for my own testing tool. The input format for API testing needs to be a little closer to plain text if I want an LLM to generate the tests.
Works very well thus far; test files for workflows are plain text, stored in git.
For my web framework, two years ago was a pain to test signup/email verification/sign-in flows. With this new tool+format it's now all automated (including testing the verification link).
First_Chain_6222@reddit
I created browser extension for rest and graphql tracing, mocking and testing. Available for chrome and Firefox https://github.com/mhdzumair/APIlot
duy0699cat@reddit
Am i the only one just having AI use curl for me?
Empanatacion@reddit
Pro tip: Claude code or copilot can just call curl however you like. Things like swapping in variables or going out and acquiring tokens to reuse across requests are things it can just do. Give it a skill that remembers all the particular details of URLs and paths and then you just tell it "get a token from the QA environment and call the order API for customer x, then look up the items in the order in the inventory API"
SETHW@reddit
is this an efficient use of tokens when you're essentially asking it to copy/paste?
turbothy@reddit
https://hurl.dev/
Easy to use for both test scripts and ad-hoc API exploration.
cedric005@reddit
We use dothttp
w3npigsfly@reddit
That’s why i made https://apiquest.net ui and standalone runner to replace postman Hopefully other people find it useful too. I’d love some honest feedback
AsterYujano@reddit
Bruno is really good and integrates well with agentic coding. AI can edit the yaml files easily
SaltMaker23@reddit
All of that don't matter, in the AI era, it's faster to spin a frontend that actually calls the API than to setup all of that postmarn nonsense.
It's also better to test internally with actual calls to your endpoints, integrating with an external thirdparty tool to do such a basic and core testing capability doesn't make sense either.
Postman made sense in an era where calling API was a hurdle and a tool to call API was valuable, that time is long gone, a jupyter notebook is already a local selfhosted replacement for postman.