Hoppscotch 2026.9 surge for teams choosing Postman or Insomnia

I see why Hoppscotch is surging. It holds 80,706 stars and 6,193 forks on GitHub. This means it has 101% higher community adoption than Insomnia, which has 40,097 stars. Developers prefer the fast, web-based interface. You already know that heavy desktop apps slow down your workflow. Hoppscotch runs in a browser tab or as a PWA. It uses Rust, Vue, Tauri, and NestJS to maintain speed. The tool handles REST and GraphQL APIs. It also supports WebSocket testing. In its 2026.5.0 release, Hoppscotch added OpenAPI 3.1 collection export and Mongolian language support. This update also included a secret variable leak fix to keep credentials client-side only. It also added desktop zoom level control and configurable proxy URLs via environment variables or the admin dashboard. I once saw a user report a bug where clicking an email invite link caused a 500 error in the dev console. The team addressed this by fixing the GetInviteDetails GQL query. This error prevented some users from joining workspaces even after they logged in through GitHub.

Postman is a heavy, cloud-first platform. Abhinav Asthana started it as a Chrome extension. It charges $14 per user per month for its Basic plan. For a 5-person team, this cost reaches $840 per year. Hoppscotch is free if you self-host it. Hoppscotch provides a PWA with offline mode. Postman includes built-in mock servers and scheduled API monitors. While Postman includes built-in mock servers and scheduled API monitors, Hoppscotch lacks these built-in tools, which forces teams to find other ways to simulate endpoints or monitor performance without paying for a premium subscription. Postman uses Newman for CI/CD, while Hoppscotch uses hopp-cli. Postman allows users to export collections as a Postman Collection v2.1 JSON file. Hoppscotch has a native Postman collection importer under Import/Export.

The Hoppscotch Community Edition allows users to manage workspaces and user activities via an Admin Dashboard. Hoppscotch Enterprise is an open-core option that costs $19 per user per month. Enterprise users access SAML-based SSO, OIDC, and audit logs. Enterprise also provides priority support for early birds.

Insomnia has been around for 11 years, compared to 7 years for Hoppscotch. Insomnia uses JSX, C, Objective-C, and C++. Some developers look for alternatives like Apidog or Bruno. Apidog combines design, mocking, and testing. It supports OpenAPI specifications and provides instant mock data generation. Apidog also has visual API design. Firecamp has an interface inspired by VSCode. Firecamp works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It tests REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, and Socket.IO APIs. Restfox is an offline-first client that uses Docker. Restfox includes a plugin system and response history while using minimal resources. Requestly includes extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Requestly performs HTTP interception and modification in a local-first environment. gRPCUI serves as a specialized alternative for teams working with gRPC APIs. It provides service discovery and reflection support. Apicat is an open-source client that stores collections as .http files. This makes it Git-friendly. It supports REST, GraphQL, SSE, and gRPC. Bruno is an offline-first tool that works without an account. EchoAPI is 100% compatible with Postman script syntax. It requires no login and supports Scratch Pad. Will Postman regain its momentum against such a fast, community-driven alternative? I recommend Apicat for developers who need to keep their API collections in Git-friendly .http files on a local machine.