API Tool – Moving to Bruno

I have been moving to Bruno from Insomnia App in the last few weeks. I loved Insomnia. I have introduced it to so many folks. In recent times, though, it has become very cloud-oriented. In my last update, I thought I lost all the data. I had to downgrade to get it. That was it. 

I started looking for a replacement tool that works offline, data is open, and FOSS. Worst case, a non-FOSS tool that works offline and data is open. But I was lucky there were few FOSS choices

• Hoppscotch
  • FOSS
  • It's an online tool
    • It will need a browser addon for CORS support
  • Has support for SSEs, WebSockets, MQTT, etc
  • It has a huge community
• Restfox
  • FOSS
  • Online tool
    •  Self hostable too
    • It will need a browser addon for CORS support
  • Offline Desktop tool
  • It has good import and export
  • It has a small but decent community
• Bruno
  • Offline tool
  • FOSS
  • Good Git Support (text files on disk) for collaboration
  • Good import and export
  • It has a big community and is growing
  • It has support for scripting requests and responses if required
  • It has an ability to add assertions on the response for testing
  • We can add documentation to requests

Though I like Hoppscotch's UI, for me the choice was between Restfox and Bruno. I liked Bruno because of its file system approach. Every request is stored as a text file on the file system; even though it's a new format, they are pretty readable, and collections are just folders. This makes it easy to commit to git and collaborate with teams. Also, it makes it easy to convince your team members. 

The UI is good enough for me to use. And the format is quite clear if I want to hack something. I will keep an eye on Restfox and Hoppscotch. I see some use cases where they are helpful. For now, my daily driver is Bruno.

I should also thank Insomnia; I have been using it for a long time. It was a pleasure until now. Thanks to the initial developer and all the current developers. All the very best.