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Insomnia REST VS Swagger Codegen

Compare Insomnia REST VS Swagger Codegen 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.

Swagger Codegen logo Swagger Codegen

Swagger Codegen can reduce the complexities that arise in your build process by providing client SDKs and server stubs for any API you want.
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Swagger Codegen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-24

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.

Swagger Codegen features and specs

  • Automation
    Swagger Codegen automates the process of generating client libraries, server stubs, API documentation, and more from an OpenAPI Specification. This reduces manual effort and speeds up development.
  • Multi-Language Support
    It supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks, enabling developers to generate code for various platforms and technologies with ease.
  • Consistency
    By generating code from a single API specification, it ensures consistency across different client implementations, reducing the likelihood of discrepancies.
  • Community and Extensibility
    Swagger Codegen is open-source and has an active community, allowing users to contribute or extend functionality to meet specific needs through plugins or templates.

Possible disadvantages of Swagger Codegen

  • Customization Complexity
    While customization is possible, it can be complex and time-consuming, especially for teams that require highly customized code generation templates.
  • Learning Curve
    Using Swagger Codegen effectively requires understanding the OpenAPI Specification and the tool's configuration options, which may present a learning curve for new users.
  • Generated Code Quality
    The quality and performance of the generated code can vary depending on the language and framework. Developers may need to make significant modifications to meet production standards.
  • Dependency Management
    Generated projects may include dependencies that need careful management to ensure compatibility and security, which may add additional overhead to the development process.

Insomnia REST videos

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

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

Swagger Codegen videos

Jesse Collis - Automatically Generating your API Client with Swagger and Swagger Codegen

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Insomnia REST and Swagger Codegen)
API Tools
97 97%
3% 3
Development
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Tool
0 0%
100% 100

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 Swagger Codegen

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

Swagger Codegen Reviews

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

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Insomnia REST should be more popular than Swagger Codegen. 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)

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Swagger Codegen mentions (14)

  • Swagger Made Simple: A Walkthrough of API Documentation
    Swagger Codegen is a tool that generates code from your API specifications. It creates templates for server or client apps in various languages, saving time by providing a base for API integration. - Source: dev.to / 8 months ago
  • How to Write Great API Documentation 🗒
    Swagger Codegen: Generate client libraries and API documentation (click here). - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • How to Build Efficient CRUD Apps?
    Swagger Codegen: Automatically generates client SDKs, server stubs, and API documentation based on the OpenAPI specification. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Let's write a simple microservice in Clojure
    Swagger descriptor for REST API with nice Swagger UI console. Nowadays, it is a standard de facto. Microservices should be accessible via HTTP and operate with data in a human-readable JSON format. As a bonus, it is super easy to generate data types and API client code for the client side (it works well for a TypeScript-based front-end, for example). - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Different Levels of Project Documentation
    Often used for cases where a project exposes a REST or other type of API service. Open API is a popular method of documenting such API services. It can also be used along side tools such as Swagger Codegen to produce boilerplate code for API interaction / testing purposes. There may also be support files for popular API testing tools such as Postman or Insomnia. This makes it easier at a glance to see what data is... - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

OpenAPI Generator - OpenAPI Generator enables you to generate documentation, clients, and servers from OpenAPI 2.0/3.x documents without hassle.

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

Widdershins - Widdershins is an open-source, easy to use Semoasa/ OpenAPI/ AsyncAPI/ definition to ReSlate/Slate compatible markdown released under the MIT License.

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

API Transformer - API Transformer is a powerful solution that enables you to Transform API specifications to any format.