Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Insomnia REST VS Azure Container Instances

Compare Insomnia REST VS Azure Container Instances and see what are their differences

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.

Azure Container Instances logo Azure Container Instances

Easily run application containers in the cloud with a single command. Azure Container Instances lets you get started in seconds and lower your infrastructure costs with per-second billing.
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Azure Container Instances Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-02-05

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.

Azure Container Instances features and specs

  • Simplified Deployment
    Azure Container Instances allows for quick and easy deployment of containers without the need for managing virtual machines or orchestrators.
  • Scalability
    ACIs can be scaled up or down based on demand, providing flexibility and cost-efficiency for varying workloads.
  • Cost-Effective
    You only pay for the compute resources you use, making it ideal for quick tasks and short-lived workloads.
  • Integration with Azure Services
    ACIs can be easily integrated with other Azure services such as Azure Virtual Networks, Azure Monitor, and Azure Logs for comprehensive cloud solutions.
  • Fast Start-up
    Containers start quickly in ACIs, allowing for rapid scaling and fast execution of workloads.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Container Instances

  • Limited Orchestration
    ACIs lack the advanced orchestration capabilities seen in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or other orchestrators, which may be necessary for complex applications.
  • Statefulness Limitations
    ACIs are best suited for stateless applications. Managing stateful applications may require additional services and configurations.
  • Not Ideal for Long-Running Workloads
    Though cost-effective for short tasks, ACIs may become expensive for long-running applications compared to other container solutions.
  • Limited Customization
    ACIs provide fewer customization options in terms of infrastructure and configurations compared to managing your own VMs or using AKS.
  • Networking Constraints
    While ACIs integrate with virtual networks, there are limitations on advanced networking features, which might be crucial for complex network architectures.

Insomnia REST videos

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

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

Azure Container Instances videos

Azure Container Instances Tutorial | Serverless containers in cloud

More videos:

  • Review - Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) & Azure Container Instances (ACI) For Beginners

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Insomnia REST and Azure Container Instances)
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Developer Tools
88 88%
12% 12
DevOps Tools
0 0%
100% 100
APIs
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 Insomnia REST and Azure Container Instances

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

Azure Container Instances Reviews

We have no reviews of Azure Container Instances yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Insomnia REST seems to be a lot more popular than Azure Container Instances. While we know about 129 links to Insomnia REST, we've tracked only 8 mentions of Azure Container Instances. 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.

Insomnia REST mentions (129)

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Azure Container Instances mentions (8)

  • Azure Container Instances vs Sliplane
    Azure Container Instances (ACI) and Sliplane both simplify deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications. However, there are some key differences, and both platforms serve different users and use cases. Let's compare them side by side. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • A Brief History Of Serverless
    This model was so successful that we started to see others create competitors such as AWS Fargate and Azure Container Instances. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Similar to AWS Fargate provider?
    Https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/container-instances and as /u/re-thc posted, GKE Autopilot can be that for Google Cloud. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Deploy Application on Azure App Services
    Containerize and deploy the application using one of the container delivery services on Azure like App Services, Container Instances, or Kubernetes Services. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Run Apache APISIX on Microsoft Azure Container Instance
    Apache APISIX is an open-source Microservice API gateway and platform designed for managing microservices requests of high availability, fault tolerance, and distributed system. You can install Apache APISIX by the different methods (Docker, Helm, or RPM) and run it in the various public cloud providers because of its cloud-native behavior. In this post, you will learn how easily run Apache APISIX API Gateway in... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Insomnia REST and Azure Container Instances, you can also consider the following products

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

Kubernetes - Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

Google Kubernetes Engine - Google Kubernetes Engine is a powerful cluster manager and orchestration system for running your Docker containers. Set up a cluster in minutes.

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

Apache Mesos - Apache Mesos abstracts resources away from machines, enabling fault-tolerant and elastic distributed systems to easily be built and run effectively.