Insomnia
Design, test and debug APIs without writing a line of client code.
What it is
About Insomnia
Insomnia lets developers build and send HTTP, GraphQL, gRPC and WebSocket requests, organise them into collections, and chain requests together with environment variables. It supports collaborative workspaces, Git-based version control of collections, and can generate code snippets and OpenAPI specs, making it a core tool for backend and API-integration work. The free tier is fully featured for individual developers, with paid plans adding cloud sync and team collaboration.
What you can do with it
Capabilities
Build and send REST, GraphQL, gRPC and WebSocket requests
Organise requests into collections and environments for dev/staging/prod variables
Chain requests and write pre-request and post-response scripts for auth flows
Run automated test suites and CI checks against an API
Import and export OpenAPI specs and generate client code snippets
How to learn it
Learning Resources
Insomnia's official documentation and Kong's getting-started guides
YouTube walkthroughs comparing Insomnia to Postman for REST and GraphQL testing
Practise by building a collection against a public API such as weather or GitHub
Insomnia's onboarding collection bundled with the app
Pro Tip
Use environment variables and a base_url variable from day one — it transforms flipping a whole collection between local, staging and production from a find-and-replace into a one-click change.
Skills that use this tool
Roles that use this tool