Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Insomnia REST VS Netlify

Compare Insomnia REST VS Netlify 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.

Netlify logo Netlify

Build, deploy and host your static site or app with a drag and drop interface and automatic delpoys from GitHub or Bitbucket
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Netlify Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

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.

Netlify features and specs

  • Deployment Speed
    Netlify offers very fast and easy deployment processes, often requiring just a push to a Git repository.
  • Built-in CDN
    Netlify includes a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) to speed up the delivery of websites and applications.
  • Serverless Functions
    Netlify provides serverless functions allowing developers to run backend code without managing servers.
  • Automated Builds
    Automated build processes are integrated, supporting continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD).
  • Custom Domains and SSL
    Easily manage custom domains and automatically provision and renew SSL certificates.
  • Integrated Form Handling
    Netlify offers form handling capabilities out-of-the-box, simplifying the process of collecting form data.
  • Plugins and Integrations
    Extensible with a wide range of plugins and integrations including analytics, CMS, and other third-party services.
  • Developer-Friendly
    Offers a wide range of developer-friendly features, such as split testing, instant rollbacks, and APIs for customization.
  • Free Tier
    Generous free tier that allows for hosting of personal projects and small websites at no cost.

Possible disadvantages of Netlify

  • Pricing
    While there's a free tier, more advanced features and higher usage can become expensive on a paid plan.
  • Function Limits
    Serverless functions have execution and duration limits, which may not be suitable for all applications.
  • Platform-Specific
    Deployment and feature configurations can be platform-specific, which may require learning new processes that differ from other providers.
  • Build Minutes
    The free tier includes limited build minutes, which can be a constraint for projects that require frequent deployments.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    Using Netlify-specific features (like certain build plugins) can make it harder to migrate to another hosting provider.
  • Limited Backend Services
    Primarily designed for frontend applications, so it may not be as robust for extensive backend services compared to traditional servers.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Some advanced features may have a steep learning curve for beginners.
  • Build Times
    Build times can be slow for very large sites or monorepos, impacting continuous deployment speed.
  • Support
    Customer support responses can be slow on the lower-tier plans.

Insomnia REST videos

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

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

Netlify videos

Netlify Platform Tutorial Review

More videos:

  • Review - Deploy Websites In Seconds With Netlify
  • Review - Deploy Your Website In Minutes With Netlify

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Insomnia REST and Netlify)
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Cloud Computing
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
61 61%
39% 39
APIs
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Insomnia REST and Netlify. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
Log in or Post with

Reviews

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

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

Netlify Reviews

  1. Eleanor Bennett
    · Digital Marketing Specialist at Logit.io ·
    Useful previews

    As someone who is often creating new pages, Netlify's preview makes the review process easier. You can also use the generated URL from Netlify's preview to run an SEO audit prior to going live. This is very useful for spotting bugs or broken redirects.


Top 15 Cloudflare Alternatives: A Complete Guide
Netlify is a CDN service that also offers edge computing, web security, and VPN solutions. Netlify allows you to deploy and run your web content and applications on its edge network, which has over 70 edge locations in 35 countries. Netlify also provides security features, such as SSL, DDoS protection, WAF, and firewall, to protect your web content and applications.
Exploring alternatives to Vercel: A guide for web developers
Netlify is one of the most popular alternatives to Vercel, offering a comprehensive platform for deploying static sites and modern web applications. With a strong focus on developer experience, Netlify provides powerful features such as serverless functions, continuous deployment, and advanced analytics.
Source: fleek.xyz
Choosing the best Next.js hosting platform
Where Netlify is superior to Vercel is the list of add-ons they offer. Among them, Netlify Forms allow developers to manage forms and submission without extra code. It even integrates with third-party applications such as MailChimp, Zendesk, and more.
Top 10 Netlify Alternatives
Although Netlify is a credible static app hosting and deployment platform for all sizes of businesses. But if you still want alternatives, then you should consider our suggested Netlify alternatives. This guide displays all these alternatives to Netlify in detail with pricing structure and core properties. Hopefully, you will pick a suitable option for your project.
3 best alternatives to the big cloud providers
Very interesting topic! I’m not sure if things like Netlify or Vercel could replace something like Kubernetes on GCP but I believe in the power of Netlify for hosting websites!
Source: dev.to

Social recommendations and mentions

Insomnia REST might be a bit more popular than Netlify. We know about 129 links to it since March 2021 and only 108 links to Netlify. 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)

View more

Netlify mentions (108)

  • Deploy Your Full-Stack App for Free: Host Backend on Render and Frontend on Netlify in Minutes
    Deploy on Netlify Go to https://netlify.com and log in. Click "Add new site" → "Import an existing project". Connect your GitHub and choose your frontend repo. Fill in the deploy settings: Build Command: npm run build (or flutter build web) Publish Directory: build (for React) or build/web (for Flutter) Add your environment variables (e.g., your backend URL). Click Deploy Site. You’ll get a public frontend URL like:. - Source: dev.to / 24 days ago
  • How Bun can help to revive a Gridsome project
    Starting from this year, builds for this website's code through my Netlify account began failing. - Source: dev.to / 2 months ago
  • I'm Joining Sentry
    As much as this is exciting news, it does mean that sadly I'm moving on from Netlify. Netlify which has been my home for the last 2 years and who believed in us(and me) before anyone else did. Their support is what made SolidStart possible. I've learned so much about deployment and infrastructure working closely with the Frameworks and Primitives team. I've traveled the world giving talks alongside the Developer... - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Join us for the Netlify Dynamic Site Challenge: $3,000 in Prizes!
    We are so excited to team up with Netlify to bring you our next DEV challenge. This Challenge is all about dynamic and high-performance digital experiences, across any framework! - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Replatforming from Gatsby to Zola!
    Wait as the Netlify CI/CD robots work their magic to build and push my updated blog site with the shiny new post to the open internet. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Insomnia REST and Netlify, you can also consider the following products

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

Vercel - Vercel is the platform for frontend developers, providing the speed and reliability innovators need to create at the moment of inspiration.

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

CloudFlare - Cloudflare is a global network designed to make everything you connect to the Internet secure, private, fast, and reliable.

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

Heroku - Agile deployment platform for Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, Python, and Scala. Setup takes only minutes and deploys are instant through git. Leave tedious server maintenance to Heroku and focus on your code.