Postman

Postman became the standard API development tool, but its shift toward cloud-first features, mandatory account creation, and pricing changes have frustrated developers who want a simple, local-first API client.

Hoppscotch is a lightweight, browser-based API client with a clean interface and real-time WebSocket support. It works entirely in the browser or can be self-hosted — no account required. Bruno takes a fundamentally different approach: API collections are stored as plain files on your filesystem using a Markdown-like syntax (Bru language), making them version-controllable with Git. This solves Postman's biggest pain point for teams — API collections synced via Git rather than Postman's cloud.

Bruno's filesystem-first approach is transformative for development teams. Instead of sharing Postman workspaces through a paid team plan, your API collections live alongside your code in the same Git repository. Pull requests can include API collection changes, CI/CD pipelines can run API tests from the repository, and new team members get the complete API collection when they clone the repo.

Hoppscotch excels for quick API testing — its browser-based interface loads instantly, supports REST, GraphQL, WebSocket, SSE, and MQTT, and can be self-hosted behind your company firewall for internal API development. Both tools prove that API clients don't need to be cloud-dependent or paid services.