Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Insomnia REST VS phpDocumentor

Compare Insomnia REST VS phpDocumentor and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

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.

phpDocumentor logo phpDocumentor

Documentation Generator for PHP . Contribute to phpDocumentor/phpDocumentor development by creating an account on GitHub.
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • phpDocumentor Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-28

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.

phpDocumentor features and specs

  • Comprehensive Documentation
    phpDocumentor generates detailed documentation, including class structures, methods, and properties, which makes it easier for developers to understand large codebases.
  • Automatic Documentation Generation
    It automatically generates documentation based on the comments and annotations in the code, which saves time and effort compared to manually writing documentation.
  • Customization
    phpDocumentor allows for customization in the documentation output, including templates for different styles and formats, ensuring the documentation meets specific project needs.
  • Integration
    It can be easily integrated into various development workflows and continuous integration pipelines, providing up-to-date documentation with every code change.
  • Community Support
    Being an open-source project, phpDocumentor has an active community that provides support and contributes to its continuous improvement.

Possible disadvantages of phpDocumentor

  • Learning Curve
    New users may find it challenging to learn phpDocumentor, especially those unfamiliar with the PHPDoc standard or command-line interfaces.
  • Configuration Complexity
    Configuring phpDocumentor can be complex, particularly for projects with extensive customization needs or non-standard directory structures.
  • Performance
    Generating documentation for very large projects can be slow and resource-intensive, potentially impacting overall development productivity.
  • PHP Focused
    phpDocumentor is specifically designed for PHP, meaning it is not suitable for projects written in other languages, limiting its use in multi-language ecosystems.
  • Maintenance
    As an open-source tool, users may encounter issues with timely updates or bug fixes unless actively maintained by contributors.

Insomnia REST videos

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

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

phpDocumentor videos

No phpDocumentor videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Insomnia REST and phpDocumentor)
API Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Documentation
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Knowledge Base
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using Insomnia REST and phpDocumentor. 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 phpDocumentor

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

phpDocumentor Reviews

We have no reviews of phpDocumentor yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Insomnia REST seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 129 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

phpDocumentor mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of phpDocumentor yet. Tracking of phpDocumentor recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

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

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

Doxygen - Generate documentation from source code

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

Slate API Docs Generator - Create beautiful, intelligent, responsive API documentation.

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

Sandcastle - Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source...