Postman alternatives are sought mostly by developers and QA teams who started on a free API client and then met the per-user bill, the sign-in requirement for collections, or a workspace model that lives in the vendor's cloud. Some want another client, others want the platform layer above it (gateway, catalogue, developer portal). Our category data covers the second group, so this page ranks those platforms and points to the client tools separately.
Sebastiaan SmitsFounderShort answer: Looking for a replacement for Postman? Tyk, Sensedia and Gravitee.io come first in our API management ranking. Challengers take places 1 to 3 here. Big brands follow in the order of our category ranking. Start with Tyk if you want to run the gateway yourself, with flat pricing, and are willing to ask for a quote. These 12 products are all in Best API Management Tools in 2026; the notes say how each one compares with Postman.
Vendors can pay for more visibility on this website, for example a higher place in a ranking or more room on a page. Commercial relationships can also affect which products we feature and how prominently. Every vendor link is marked the same, whatever the arrangement behind it. How that works.
Postman's free plan is for one user. Team is $19 per user per month billed annually, Solo is $9 for one person, and API Catalog, private workspaces, audit logs, governance and Insights sit on Enterprise, which is quoted. A QA team of ten on Team pays $190 a month before AI credit overages, so the cost scales with headcount rather than with usage.
Postman retired the Scratch Pad on 15 September 2023. Its lightweight API client works without signing in, but Postman's own announcement states that environments and collections require a Postman account. Teams that kept requests off a vendor's servers, or run in networks where staff cannot sign in to a third party, have to choose between the account and a different tool.
Postman organises collaboration around internal, partner and public workspaces, and its Git integration is documented as supported for internal workspaces only. A team that wants its API requests to live in the same repository as the code, reviewed in the same pull request, is working against the grain of that model and tends to look at tools that store requests as files.
| Alternative | Headquarters | Free option | Pricing model | Switch if | Our rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tyk | United Kingdom | No free tier | Published | you want to run the gateway yourself, with flat pricing, and are willing to ask for a quote | #1 |
| Sensedia | Brazil | No free tier | On request | you manage several gateways and want the portal and open banking tooling in one low-code platform | #2 |
| Gravitee.io | United States | Yes | Published | per-seat pricing is the problem and you need to publish and govern APIs, not just call them | #5 |
| Kong | United States | No free tier | Published | you want a client that can store requests locally or in Git, from a vendor that also sells the gateway | #4 |
| WSO2 | Sri Lanka | No free tier | Published | air-gapped or self-hosted API management matters and you can run Java platform software | #6 |
| Azure API Management | United States | No free tier | Published | your APIs run on Azure and you want pay-per-call pricing with a free first million operations | #8 |
| AWS API Gateway | United States | Yes | Published | you host on AWS and want the cost to follow traffic instead of headcount | #9 |
| Google Apigee | United States | No free tier | Published | you run a large API programme on Google Cloud and have someone to model environment costs | #10 |
| IBM API Connect | United States | No free tier | On request | you need on-premises or single-tenant deployment with vendor support around the clock | #12 |
| MuleSoft | United States | No free tier | On request | API management is one part of a wider integration programme you are buying anyway | #11 |
| Boomi | United States | No free tier | On request | you already use Boomi for integration and want the API layer from the same vendor | #15 |
| Axway (74Software) | France | No free tier | On request | you want to package and monetise APIs through a marketplace and buy through an enterprise contract | #16 |
United Kingdom · Published
Tyk runs an open-source gateway (MPL 2.0 core, with a commercial enterprise folder) and sells a usage-based Core plan, a flat-rate Professional plan and a quoted Enterprise plan, none with a published figure. The same product runs in cloud, hybrid or self-managed form, with a 48-hour cloud trial. It has no request-building client.
Switch from Postman if you want to run the gateway yourself, with flat pricing, and are willing to ask for a quote.
Brazil · On request
Sensedia is a low-code API platform with multi-gateway management, a developer portal where consumers can test and consume APIs, analytics, an AI gateway, an events hub and open banking support. A free trial is referenced, but pricing is not shown on the page. It is the least familiar name on this list to most developers.
Switch from Postman if you manage several gateways and want the portal and open banking tooling in one low-code platform.
Where Sensedia stands: place 2 of 16 in the API management ranking →
United States · Published
Gravitee is not an API client. It is an API management platform with gateway, console and developer portal, priced at a published flat $2,500 a month for one production gateway with unlimited users and APIs. The Apache 2.0 Community Edition is free to self-host. It replaces Postman's catalogue role, not its request-testing role.
Switch from Postman if per-seat pricing is the problem and you need to publish and govern APIs, not just call them.
United States · Published
Kong owns Insomnia, the closest like-for-like API client: Essentials is $0 with Git Sync for up to three users, Pro is $12 per user per month, and a local-only Scratch Pad needs no login. Kong Gateway itself is the open-source runtime Postman never was. The gateway and Konnect are a separate purchase from the client.
Switch from Postman if you want a client that can store requests locally or in Git, from a vendor that also sells the gateway.
Kong comes 4 of 16 when API management products are ranked here →
Sri Lanka · Published
WSO2 API Manager is open source with an unsupported community distribution, and is offered self-hosted, hybrid (own gateway, managed control plane) or as the Bijira SaaS. It covers publishing APIs and an API portal. Teams wanting Postman's collections and test runner will find no direct counterpart here.
Switch from Postman if air-gapped or self-hosted API management matters and you can run Java platform software.
WSO2 holds rank 6 among 16 entries in our API management guide →
United States · Published
Azure API Management is a managed gateway and portal billed by tier. The Consumption tier is serverless and includes the first million operations, while Developer is a non-production tier with no SLA. A self-hosted gateway option exists for hybrid cases. It assumes you already build on Azure and offers no collection-based test client.
Switch from Postman if your APIs run on Azure and you want pay-per-call pricing with a free first million operations.
Where Azure API Management stands: place 8 of 16 in the API management ranking →
United States · Published
Amazon API Gateway bills per call and data transfer with no per-user charge: REST APIs are $3.50 per million calls in the US regions we checked, HTTP APIs $1 per million up to 300 million, WebSocket APIs by message and connection minute. New accounts get one million calls a month for 12 months. It is a runtime, not a workspace.
Switch from Postman if you host on AWS and want the cost to follow traffic instead of headcount.
Our API management guide puts AWS API Gateway at 9 of 16; read why →
United States · Published
Google Apigee offers evaluation, pay-as-you-go and subscription pricing, with environment-based charges instead of per-user ones. It is a full lifecycle platform for large API programmes rather than a tool a QA engineer opens to send a request, and its pricing requires modelling environments and traffic before you can estimate a bill.
Switch from Postman if you run a large API programme on Google Cloud and have someone to model environment costs.
Google Apigee comes 10 of 16 when API management products are ranked here →
United States · On request
IBM API Connect is sold as pay-as-you-go SaaS on AWS, annual Standard and Premium SaaS tiers, a reserved single-tenant instance, or self-managed software for on-premises, hybrid and multi-cloud. SaaS trials run 30 days. It is built for enterprise governance, with 24x7 support included, and is heavier than a team of developers needs.
Switch from Postman if you need on-premises or single-tenant deployment with vendor support around the clock.
Check IBM API Connect in the ranked list (12 out of 16, API management) →
United States · On request
MuleSoft's Anypoint Platform bundles API Manager, Exchange for discovery, API Experience Hub portals, an API designer and governance rules with its integration products. Pricing is quoted, with no published figures we could confirm. A team that only wanted a lighter API client is buying a much larger platform.
Switch from Postman if API management is one part of a wider integration programme you are buying anyway.
United States · On request
Boomi's API Management is part of its integration platform: gateway, developer portals, discovery, security scoring and policy management, with AI-assisted generation of OpenAPI specifications. It can sit across Boomi, cloud and third-party gateways, and a 30-day trial is offered. Prices are not stated on the page we checked.
Switch from Postman if you already use Boomi for integration and want the API layer from the same vendor.
France · On request
Axway sells API management inside its Amplify Platform alongside Fusion (integration), Engage (a marketplace for packaging and monetising APIs) and an AI gateway. It describes itself as a member of 74Software. Pricing is not shown on the page we checked, and it targets organisations with a formal API product programme.
Switch from Postman if you want to package and monetise APIs through a marketplace and buy through an enterprise contract.
Read our review of Axway (74Software) (position 16 of 16 on the API management list) →
Postman remains the right choice when the team already lives in it. A shared workspace, collection runner, mock servers, monitors and documentation in one tool is hard to rebuild piecemeal, and the free plan is genuinely usable for one person. If the Team price per seat is small beside what developers cost, and nobody objects to requests being stored in Postman's workspaces, switching mostly means retraining people. The Enterprise layer (API Catalog, governance, Insights) also has no cheap equivalent among the client tools.
People use Postman as a request client, a test runner, a documentation host and a catalogue. The gateway and management platforms on this page replace only the last of those, and then only partly. Write down which collections are run in CI and which are only used by hand, because the first group has to be kept executable wherever it goes.
Collections and environments live in Postman workspaces, so export them while the account is still active. Check for environment values holding secrets, since those should be reissued in the new tool and not copied as plain text. Then decide whether the new store is a Git repository, a local folder or the vendor's cloud.
Postman has a free plan for one user, with 50 AI credits and 1,000 API monitoring requests a month.
Solo costs $9 a month, Team $19 per user per month (both billed annually), and Enterprise is quoted. Team collaboration features and 90-day collection recovery start at the Team plan.
Partly. The lightweight API client lets you create and send requests and keeps its data locally without signing in. Postman states that environments and collections require a Postman account, and the old Scratch Pad was discontinued on 15 September 2023.
Insomnia (owned by Kong) offers Git Sync, free for up to three users and for every user from the $12 Pro tier.
Bruno, an MIT-licensed client, saves collections as plain-text files in a folder you can commit. Neither is in our category data, which covers API management platforms, so we have not ranked them.
For clients, Bruno and Hoppscotch are both MIT-licensed, and Hoppscotch documents self-hosting.
For platforms, Gravitee's Community Edition (Apache 2.0) and Kong Gateway are open source, as is Tyk's gateway core (MPL 2.0). These platforms manage and run APIs; none is a drop-in replacement for the collection runner.
A per-seat client is cheapest on the free tiers: Insomnia Essentials and Bruno cost nothing.
Among platforms, Amazon API Gateway and the Azure Consumption tier bill by call instead of by user, and Gravitee charges a flat monthly figure with unlimited users. Which is cheaper depends on request volume.
Not on their own. A gateway or management platform publishes, secures and measures APIs in production. Postman is mainly used to build, test and document requests. Most teams that adopt a gateway keep a client alongside it, which is why Kong's Insomnia heads this page.
Founder of The Knowledge Engineers and of 2 Steps Ahead, an AI search visibility agency. Editorially responsible for every page on this site; research and drafting are AI-assisted.
Sebastiaan Smits wrote and checked this page, most recently on 2 November 2026. See how we review.
