Postman alternatives: 12 API management tools compared
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.
AuthorHannah ReiterSenior Analyst, Business Applications
Pricing: Free plan for one user; Solo $9 per month, Team $19 per user per month, published; Enterprise, where API Catalog, Insights and governance sit, quoted
Established in: United States
Built for: A platform team that wants API governance and a catalog layered on top of the API client developers already use daily
Not for: A team looking for a standalone production gateway to replace Kong, Azure or AWS
01
Why buyers look past Postman
01
The price is per user, and the useful tiers are not the free one
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.
02
Collections and environments need an account
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.
03
Shared work is organised around Postman's workspaces
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.
Kong Gateway open source is free, self-hosted; Konnect Plus from $25 per month per control plane plus $200 per extra million requests, published; Enterprise quoted
#1
you want a client that can store requests locally or in Git, from a vendor that also sells the gateway
Community Edition free and open source (Apache 2.0), self-hosted; paid API Management from $2,500 per month (Planet, one production gateway) and Event Management from $1,250 per month, published; higher tiers quoted
#2
per-seat pricing is the problem and you need to publish and govern APIs, not just call them
Open-source gateway free; Core plan usage-based, Professional plan flat-rate with unlimited requests, prices not published; Enterprise quoted; 48-hour cloud trial
#3
you want to run the gateway yourself, with flat pricing, and are willing to ask for a quote
Source code open source (Apache 2.0), free to build and self-host without support; WSO2's own production binaries need a paid subscription; Bijira SaaS from $119 per month, published; Enterprise quoted
#4
air-gapped or self-hosted API management matters and you can run Java platform software
60-day evaluation at no cost; pay-as-you-go published (environments from $365 per month per region plus per-million-call charges); Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus subscriptions quoted
#8
you run a large API programme on Google Cloud and have someone to model environment costs
you manage several gateways and want the portal and open banking tooling in one low-code platform
03
What each one does differently
1
Kong
United States · Kong Gateway open source is free, self-hosted; Konnect Plus from $25 per month per control plane plus $200 per extra million requests, published; Enterprise quoted
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.
United States · Community Edition free and open source (Apache 2.0), self-hosted; paid API Management from $2,500 per month (Planet, one production gateway) and Event Management from $1,250 per month, published; higher tiers quoted
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 Kingdom · Open-source gateway free; Core plan usage-based, Professional plan flat-rate with unlimited requests, prices not published; Enterprise quoted; 48-hour cloud trial
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.
Sri Lanka · Source code open source (Apache 2.0), free to build and self-host without support; WSO2's own production binaries need a paid subscription; Bijira SaaS from $119 per month, published; Enterprise quoted
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.
United States · Consumption tier pay-per-call with the first million operations included; Classic and v2 tiers billed per unit, published rates
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.
United States · Pay-per-API-call and data transfer, published rates; free tier included for new accounts
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.
United States · 60-day evaluation at no cost; pay-as-you-go published (environments from $365 per month per region plus per-million-call charges); Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus subscriptions quoted
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.
United States · Pay-as-you-go and annual Standard and Premium SaaS tiers on AWS with a 30-day trial; reserved instance and self-managed software quoted
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.
United States · Quoted per organisation (Salesforce enterprise licensing); usage-based on Mule flows, messages and data throughput
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.
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 · Quoted per organisation; metered on API transactions with a 1M-per-month minimum, prices not published
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.
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.
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.
05
What moving off Postman involves
01
Decide which Postman job you are replacing
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.
02
Export collections before you cancel anything
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.
06
Questions about replacing Postman
6 answers
Is Postman free?
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.
Can I use Postman without an account?
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.
What is a Postman alternative that stores requests in Git?
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.
Is there a self-hosted or open-source alternative to Postman?
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.
Which alternative is cheapest for a large team?
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.
Do the API gateways on this list replace Postman?
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.
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Sources
Checked 2 October 2026
Postman pricing: Free, Solo ($9), Team ($19 per user per month, billed annually) and Enterprise plans, free-plan limits, and which features sit on Enterprise.
Postman Docs: workspaces: Internal, partner and public workspaces; Git integration supported for internal workspaces only.
Insomnia pricing: Essentials $0, Pro $12 and Enterprise $45 per user per month; Git Sync for up to three users on Essentials; local-only Scratch Pad; Kong Inc. as publisher.
Kong pricing: Konnect Plus from $25 a month plus usage, 30-day free trial, Enterprise quoted.
