Hey!

I’m currently hitting the limits with Postman’s free tier and need your recommendations for alternatives. My company isn’t planning to upgrade to the paid version, so I’m specifically looking for:

Must-have features:

  • Unlimited API requests
  • Collection runner or similar batch testing capability
  • Data import from spreadsheets for test automation
  • The collection runner feature is crucial for my workflow: I heavily rely on being able to import Excel data to generate and map multiple API calls without manual setup.

Has anyone switched from Postman to something else that offers these capabilities? What’s your experience been like?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions! 🙏

  • sabin@lemmy.world
    0·
    10 days ago

    Sorry if this response is mal-informed and misses some important part of your workflow, but if all you’re trying to do is run a postman collection then all you really need is newman.

  • brian@programming.dev
    0·
    9 days ago

    I can use insomnium for almost everything, but it’s not as complete as postman. randomly I’ll run into some problem that makes me go back.

    for instance, there’s no way to just enter binary data on a readable format to send over websocket. with postman there’s an obvious dropdown to send hex encoded data as a binary message.

    • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      This is my official recommendation. It aims to be a drop-in replacement of Postman. They don’t have pre/post-execution scripts at the collection level (only at the request level) and there are a few other features missing but they are making pretty good progress.

      I say official because I was on my company’s committee to switch to a new API tool. Though I personally felt that we should have just paid for Postman. But our business risk team didn’t like the terms that Postman had.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
      0·
      9 days ago

      Hopscotch is the one I’ve been recommending, but it has a “use us before we also enshitify” vibe, so I’m going to check out Insomnium, the open fork of Insomnia.

  • expr@programming.dev
    0·
    10 days ago

    Curl. Everything you described is not hard to do via scripts. I use it every day for all of my API testing needs. You’re also not limited to the features Postman provides.

    • Strykker@programming.dev
      0·
      10 days ago

      This is like telling someone who needs a new table saw that they can use a handsaw.

      Like sure it works great, but it’s going to be a long process getting things done compared to something like postman.

      • runeko@programming.dev
        0·
        9 days ago

        If a person needs to process an entire kitchen worth of lumber, then yes, tablesaw. If, however, a person needs to build one simple box and also learn how the wood fits together and practice their skills, then handsaw.

      • expr@programming.dev
        0·
        10 days ago

        It does not take long to use curl, not sure what you’re talking about. There’s not particularly special about what Postman does.

    • qaz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      10 days ago

      How would you test a GraphQL API with curl?

      EDIT: Nevermind I just looked it up and I’ll just stick with postman for now.

    • dallen@programming.dev
      0·
      10 days ago

      Also my go-to, I prefer everything in version control instead of someone else’s cloud.

      IIRC, Pycharm can also inject the same .rest files.

    • GissaMittJobb@lemmy.ml
      0·
      10 days ago

      I use this as well. In fact, I have an instance of VSCode running only for access to the extension library - I do most of my editing in Android Studio, but manage Git interactions and things like Rest Client in VSCode.

  • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    10 days ago

    All I want is to make API requests with whatever headers but no fucking Electron so the app loads before the heat death of the universe… Please, please

      • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        10 days ago

        I’m genuinely wondering, if this is a situation where the open-source community just uses curl and that’s why there’s only corporate gunk for those who want more features. For example, curl obviously won’t support Excel import, but folks in the open-source community are also very unlikely to want that…

        • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
          0·
          9 days ago

          I’m genuinely wondering, if this is a situation where the open-source community just uses curl and that’s why there’s only corporate gunk for those who want more features.

          Yeah. Pretty much. As one of the folks who could code a new solution in go in a weekend, I have not - because curl plus some trivial one-liners in Bash, Python or PowerShell is already a 90% solution to what I need.

        • notabot@lemm.ee
          0·
          10 days ago

          Depending on exactly what you mean by importing from excel, there are libraries for Perl/Python/your scripting language of choice that will simplify that so it becomes a matter of a fairly small amount of code to build a test harness that does exactly what you want.

          • Ephera@lemmy.mlEnglish
            0·
            10 days ago

            Well, OP mentioned an Excel import, so I’m not 100% sure what that means either. 🙃

            But yeah, that’s part of why I’m wondering. I hardly know anything about Postman, so I’m probably underestimating how complex this would be, but it still feels like at least the core feature-set could easily be covered by an open-source tool, if anyone in the open-source community had that itch to scratch.
            Maybe it’s also just solving a problem that only companies have? The webpage mentions some things about centrally managing API definitions. Do not ask me why the API definitions are not in a repo. But I guess, if you join a company that works like that, you’re not going lean up against that…

  • kata1yst@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    10 days ago

    Milkman. It’s simple and I’ve seen bugs where it hangs, but overall it works well, doesn’t require a login, runs local, is open source, supports postman import, and exports to a nice variety of formats

    • dax@feddit.org
      0·
      10 days ago

      I am disappointed about their recent switch to a subscription model though. They quietly removed the single-time purchase “Golden Edition” and introduced multiple subscriptions. Not a good start, let’s see if the enshittification continues like with all API testing tools.

      • heavydust@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        10 days ago

        That’s hilarious. I remember Bruno being sold as the better tool because it had no subscription, and they switched to being evil in less than a year.

        • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
          0·
          10 days ago

          I wonder why is this kind of product so liable to enshittification. It’s just a simple Electron GUI to edit and submit requests to a REST API. Much more complex software has worked fine for years as FOSS.

    • Maestro@fedia.io
      0·
      10 days ago

      Yes, Bruno is great! The only downside is that everytime I start it, I have that damn Disney song stuck in my head 😆