Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Amazon API Gateway VS Insomnia REST

Compare Amazon API Gateway VS Insomnia REST and see what are their differences

Amazon API Gateway logo Amazon API Gateway

Create, publish, maintain, monitor, and secure APIs at any scale

Insomnia REST logo Insomnia REST

Design, debug, test, and mock APIs locally, on Git, or cloud. Build better APIs collaboratively for the most popular protocols with a dev‑friendly UI, built-in automation, and an extensible plugin ecosystem.
  • Amazon API Gateway Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-12
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05

Amazon API Gateway features and specs

  • Scalability
    API Gateway automatically scales to handle the number of requests your API receives, ensuring high availability and reliability.
  • Ease of Integration
    Seamlessly integrates with other AWS services like Lambda, DynamoDB, and IAM, enabling a cohesive environment for developing serverless applications.
  • Built-in Security
    Provides features such as IAM roles, API keys, and AWS WAF integration for safeguarding your APIs from potential threats.
  • Monitoring and Logging
    Supports CloudWatch integration for monitoring API requests and responses, helping you maintain observability and troubleshoot issues effectively.
  • Cost-Effective
    You only pay for the requests made to your APIs and the amount of data transferred out, making it a cost-effective solution for many use cases.
  • Caching
    Built-in caching at the API Gateway level can improve performance and reduce latency for frequently accessed data.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon API Gateway

  • Complexity in Configuration
    Setting up and managing API Gateway can be complex, especially for users who are not familiar with AWS services and cloud infrastructure.
  • Cold Start Latency
    When integrated with AWS Lambda, cold starts can introduce latency which can affect the performance of your API.
  • Cost for High Throughput
    While cost-effective for low to moderate usage, the costs can escalate with high throughput and large data transfers.
  • Debugging Issues
    Diagnosis can be complicated due to the multi-tenant nature of the service and the need to dive into multiple AWS logs and services.
  • Limited Customization
    There might be constraints regarding customizations and fine-tuning your APIs compared to self-hosting solutions.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Dependence on AWS infrastructure can lead to vendor lock-in, making it challenging to migrate to other cloud providers or solutions.

Insomnia REST features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Insomnia REST features a clean and intuitive user interface that makes it easy to create, send, and manage API requests without a steep learning curve.
  • Support for Multiple Protocols
    In addition to REST, Insomnia supports GraphQL and gRPC, making it versatile for developers working with different API protocols.
  • Environment Management
    Insomnia allows you to create and manage multiple environments, making it easier to switch between staging, development, and production settings.
  • Custom Plugins and Themes
    Insomnia supports custom plugins and themes, allowing users to extend its functionality and personalize the interface to suit their workflow.
  • Collaboration Features
    With Insomnia Teams, users can collaborate and share API requests, environments, and other resources, enhancing team productivity.
  • Cross-Platform Availability
    Insomnia is available on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, providing flexibility for users on different operating systems.

Possible disadvantages of Insomnia REST

  • Resource Heavy
    Some users have reported that Insomnia can be resource-intensive, leading to potential performance issues on lower-end machines.
  • Limited Free Features
    While Insomnia offers a free tier, some of the more advanced features, such as team collaboration and sync capabilities, require a paid subscription.
  • Steeper Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    Although the basic functionalities are user-friendly, mastering the more advanced features might require a steeper learning curve.
  • Dependency on Electron
    Since Insomnia is built on Electron, it might consume more memory and disk space compared to native applications.
  • Complex Plugin System
    While the plugin system is powerful, it can be complex and challenging for users who are not familiar with JavaScript and Node.js.

Amazon API Gateway videos

Building APIs with Amazon API Gateway

More videos:

  • Review - Create API using AWS API Gateway service - Amazon API Gateway p1

Insomnia REST videos

3 Reasons to use Insomnia REST Client in your Exploratory API Testing

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Amazon API Gateway and Insomnia REST)
API Tools
37 37%
63% 63
APIs
36 36%
64% 64
Developer Tools
0 0%
100% 100
Cloud Computing
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Amazon API Gateway and Insomnia REST

Amazon API Gateway Reviews

We have no reviews of Amazon API Gateway yet.
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Insomnia REST Reviews

Top 20 Open Source & Cloud Free Postman Alternatives (2024 Updated)
Product Introduction: Insomnia is a powerful open-source API client designed for simplicity and efficiency and works great as a postman alternative. It supports REST, GraphQL, and gRPC, making it versatile for various API types.
Source: medium.com
Best Postman Alternatives To Consider in 2025
It is a free, open-source platform that boasts a user-friendly interface and robust features like environment and collection management, code snippets, and test automation. Compared to Postman, Insomnia offers a lighter footprint and a more customizable workspace.
Postman Alternatives for API Testing and Monitoring
Insomnia is a user-friendly tool for API development and testing. Insomnia allows creating and sending HTTP and REST requests, like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and more. Users can view API responses, including status codes, headers, and body. This enables understanding how the application handles different response scenarios, for efficient debugging.
Top 10 HTTP Client and Web Debugging Proxy Tools (2023)
Insomnia REST is the best alternative for Postman. It has more than 350 open-source plugins, plus GraphQL built-in with multiple protocol support. Since GraphQL is an added value, you can fully automate the entire lifecycle of APIs, build and debug them efficiently and with ease.
15 Best Postman Alternatives for Automated API Testing [2022 Updated]
Insomnia by Kong enables you to deliver high-quality APIs through collaboration. This postman alternative also includes testing suites, which allow you to create functional tests and centralize APIs. With this platform’s streamlined API client, sending GraphQL, REST, and SOAP requests are simple. Defining variables such as authentication credentials allows you to manage...
Source: testsigma.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Insomnia REST might be a bit more popular than Amazon API Gateway. We know about 129 links to it since March 2021 and only 107 links to Amazon API Gateway. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Amazon API Gateway mentions (107)

  • 10 Lightweight API Gateways for Your Next Project
    AWS API Gateway is Amazon’s managed gateway service, designed to work seamlessly within the AWS ecosystem. It supports both REST and WebSocket APIs, with HTTP APIs being the lightweight, lower-cost option for simple proxying and routing use cases. - Source: dev.to / 3 days ago
  • 4 Cognito User Pools features you might not know about
    This opens up a world of customization options for controlling app access. For example, we can embed custom data in the ID token for the front-end client to use, enabling guards to restrict content. Alternatively, we can add custom scopes to the access token and implement fine-grained access control in an API Gateway API. All it takes is some Lambda function code, and Cognito triggers it at the right time. - Source: dev.to / 23 days ago
  • Verifying Cognito access tokens - Comparing three JWT packages for Lambda authorizers
    When the built-in Amazon API Gateway authorization methods don’t fully meet our needs, we can set up Lambda authorizers to manage the access control process. Even when using Cognito user pools and Cognito access tokens, there may still be a need for custom authorization logic. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Implementing advanced authorization with AWS Lambda for endpoint-specific access
    The API Gateway includes an endpoint structured like this:. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Turning APIs into Revenue: Passive Income Strategies for Developers
    Amazon Web Services exemplifies this approach with automatic volume discounts that encourage increased usage while maximizing revenue at each consumption level. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
View more

Insomnia REST mentions (129)

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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Amazon API Gateway and Insomnia REST, you can also consider the following products

AWS Lambda - Automatic, event-driven compute service

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

Apigee - Intelligent and complete API platform

RapidAPI for Mac - Paw is a REST client for Mac.

Django REST framework - Django REST framework is a toolkit for building web APIs.