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Insomnia REST VS Observable

Compare Insomnia REST VS Observable and see what are their differences

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  3. » Reviews
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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.

Observable logo Observable

Interactive code examples/posts
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Observable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-09

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.

Observable features and specs

  • Collaborative Environment
    Observable allows multiple users to collaborate in real-time, making it easier for teams to work together on data visualizations and analyses.
  • Reactive Programming
    The platform supports reactive programming, where changes in data automatically trigger updates in the visualizations, enhancing interactivity and reducing the need for manual updates.
  • Built-in Data Visualization Libraries
    Observable integrates seamlessly with popular libraries like D3, Plotly, and Leaflet, providing powerful tools for creating complex and interactive data visualizations.
  • Notebook Interface
    The notebook interface is user-friendly and allows for easy documentation and sharing. Users can combine code, visualizations, and markdown text in a single document.
  • Extensive Resources and Community Support
    Observable has a rich set of tutorials, examples, and a strong community, making it easier for new users to learn and get help.
  • Customizability
    Users have the flexibility to customize their visualizations extensively, thanks to the open-ended nature of JavaScript and the supported libraries.

Possible disadvantages of Observable

  • Steeper Learning Curve for Beginners
    New users, especially those without a background in JavaScript, might find the platform challenging to learn compared to more specialized data visualization tools.
  • Performance Issues
    For very large datasets or highly complex visualizations, performance can become an issue, potentially leading to slow rendering times.
  • Dependency on Internet Connection
    Observable notebooks currently require an internet connection to run, which can be a limitation for users needing offline access.
  • Limited Integration with Other Tools
    While Observable is powerful, its integration with other enterprise tools and platforms is somewhat limited compared to more established data analysis tools.
  • Subscription Costs
    Access to some of Observable's more advanced features requires a paid subscription, which might be a barrier for individual users or small teams with limited budgets.

Insomnia REST videos

+ Add

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

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

Observable videos

+ Add

Observable Overview

More videos:

  • Review - observablehq.com review observable hq data analysis
  • Review - Hands-on Data Visualization with Observable Plot

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Insomnia REST and Observable)

Insomnia REST

Observable

API Tools
100 100%
API Tools
0% 0
Data Visualization
0 0%
Data Visualization
100% 100
Developer Tools
100 100%
Developer Tools
0% 0
Data Dashboard
0 0%
Data Dashboard
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Insomnia REST and Observable. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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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 Observable

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.
Source: www.hypertest.co
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.
Source: www.blazemeter.com
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.
Source: www.bestproxyreviews.com
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

Observable Reviews

Top 10 Grafana Alternatives in 2024
Observable is a Grafana alternative that enables users to visualize data via charts and dashboards using code.
Source: middleware.io
Embedded analytics in B2B SaaS: A comparison
A few options were disregarded from the start due to a hefty price tag, these were Looker, Tableau, Power BI, GoodData. A few options like Trevor.io, Preset, Observable were disregarded as they did not seem to fit our criteria (based on the evaluation matrix).
Source: medium.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Observable should be more popular than Insomnia REST. It has been mentiond 312 times since March 2021. 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

Observable mentions (312)

  • Apache ECharts
    "Observable is obnoxious if you want to add a D3 pie chart to your Vue application and have to untangle calls to D3’s API from reactive cell values, which look like ordinary JavaScript, but are not, and will cause compilation and runtime errors when copied." Yep - as I wrote: "If you want to just blindly copy and paste d3 code, you may have issues with the docs being hosted on observable." If instead you learn the... - Source: Hacker News / about 1 month ago
  • Natural occurring molecule rivals Ozempic in weight loss, sidesteps side effects
    I'd imagine many nested named capturing groups may trip even the best automated system! I do like the solution though. I would've probably approached it differently, trying to first get the 'inverted' match (i.e. Not matching anything that isn't a currency like pattern) and refine from there. A bit like this one I did a while back, to parse garbled strings that may occur after OCR [0]. I imagine the approach does... - Source: Hacker News / 2 months ago
  • Visualizing Data Is an Art – We Should Treat It Like One
    Was looking for some mention of Mike Bostock and his epic odyssey into this space. For those who aren't familiar https://observablehq.com/@mbostock. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • Ohm: A user-friendly parsing toolkit for JavaScript and TypeScript
    I experimented with an Ohm/CodeMirror bridge that would map an Ohm grammar to CodeMirror classes for marks and syntax highlighting. It might be an interesting starting point for you: https://observablehq.com/@ajbouh/editor. - Source: Hacker News / 3 months ago
  • WebGL Fluid Simulation
    I have a fork of this that inverts the light model from additive to subtractive and suddenly its like ink in water https://observablehq.com/@tomlarkworthy/ink. - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

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

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

D3.js - D3.js is a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data. D3 helps you bring data to life using HTML, SVG, and CSS.

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

RunKit - RunKit notebooks are interactive javascript playgrounds connected to a complete node environment right in your browser. Every npm module pre-installed.

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

Vega-Lite - High-level grammar of interactive graphics

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