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Insomnia REST Client vs Retrofit: What are the differences?
What is Insomnia REST Client? The most intuitive cross-platform REST API Client π΄. Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.
What is Retrofit? A type-safe HTTP client for Android and Java. Retrofit turns your HTTP API into a Java interface.
Insomnia REST Client and Retrofit can be primarily classified as "API" tools.
Some of the features offered by Insomnia REST Client are:
- Mac, Windows and Linux
- Data import/export
- SSL client certificates
On the other hand, Retrofit provides the following key features:
- URL parameter replacement and query parameter support
- Object conversion to request body (e.g., JSON, protocol buffers)
- Multipart request body and file upload
Insomnia REST Client and Retrofit are both open source tools. Retrofit with 33K GitHub stars and 6.13K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Insomnia REST Client with 10.2K GitHub stars and 590 GitHub forks.
According to the StackShare community, Insomnia REST Client has a broader approval, being mentioned in 35 company stacks & 30 developers stacks; compared to Retrofit, which is listed in 19 company stacks and 7 developer stacks.
Postman supports automation and organization in a way that Insomnia just doesn't. Admittedly, Insomnia makes it slightly easy to query the data that you get back (in a very MongoDB-esque query language) but Postman sets you up to develop the code that you would use in development/testing right in the editor.
Pros of Insomnia REST Client
- Easy to work with16
- Great user interface11
- Works with GraphQL6
- Cross platform, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux4
- Opensource3
- Vim and Emacs key map2
- Preserves request templates2
- Does not have history feature0
Pros of Retrofit
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Cons of Insomnia REST Client
- Do not have team sharing options4
- Do not store credentials in HTTP2