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Insomnia REST VS Zsh Syntax Highlighting

Compare Insomnia REST VS Zsh Syntax Highlighting and see what are their differences

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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.

Zsh Syntax Highlighting logo Zsh Syntax Highlighting

Fish shell like syntax highlighting for Zsh.
  • Insomnia REST Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-05
  • Zsh Syntax Highlighting Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06

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.

Zsh Syntax Highlighting features and specs

  • Improved Readability
    Zsh Syntax Highlighting enhances the readability of command lines by adding color to different parts of the syntax, making it easier for users to identify errors and understand commands at a glance.
  • Error Detection
    The syntax highlighting feature quickly identifies and highlights syntax errors, helping users detect mistakes before running commands and potentially preventing faulty execution.
  • Intuitive Command Line Experience
    By color-coding commands and syntax elements, users have a visual cue about what parts of the command line might need attention, creating a more intuitive command-line experience.
  • Customization
    Users can customize the colors and styles used for syntax highlighting, allowing for a personalized experience that can fit with different themes and preferences.

Possible disadvantages of Zsh Syntax Highlighting

  • Performance Overhead
    The additional processing required for syntax highlighting can lead to increased resource consumption. In systems with limited resources, this might impact terminal performance.
  • Complex Configuration
    Setting up and customizing syntax highlighting can be complex, requiring users to dive into configuration files and understand Zsh plugins and themes, which may not be straightforward for beginners.
  • Compatibility Issues
    Some themes or plugins may not be fully compatible with zsh-syntax-highlighting, potentially causing conflicts or unexpected behavior.
  • Limited Support for Custom Languages
    While zsh-syntax-highlighting supports many common command-line tools and languages, it may not fully support syntax highlighting for less commonly used languages out-of-the-box, requiring additional customization.

Analysis of Insomnia REST

Overall verdict

  • Insomnia REST is an excellent choice for developers who need a robust and intuitive tool for API development and testing. Its comprehensive features and ease of use make it a competitive option alongside other popular API clients.

Why this product is good

  • Insomnia REST is widely regarded as a powerful tool due to its user-friendly interface, extensive plugin ecosystem, and support for multiple authentication protocols. It allows users to easily build, debug, and test RESTful APIs with features like environment variables, code generation, and response validation. Moreover, its compatibility with GraphQL and gRPC makes it versatile for modern development needs.

Recommended for

  • API Developers
  • Software Testers
  • Backend Engineers
  • Technical Leads
  • Anyone involved in RESTful API development and testing

Insomnia REST videos

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

More videos:

  • Tutorial - Insomnia REST Client Tutorial

Zsh Syntax Highlighting videos

No Zsh Syntax Highlighting videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

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Category Popularity

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API Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Customer Feedback
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
App Reviews
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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 Zsh Syntax Highlighting

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

Zsh Syntax Highlighting Reviews

We have no reviews of Zsh Syntax Highlighting yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Insomnia REST seems to be a lot more popular than Zsh Syntax Highlighting. While we know about 129 links to Insomnia REST, we've tracked only 5 mentions of Zsh Syntax Highlighting. 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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Zsh Syntax Highlighting mentions (5)

  • Make the zsh Prompt Go Faster
    Zsh can compile zsh scripts using the builtin zcompile into wordcode. This will have the effect of having faster parsing. The way we use this to get a faster prompt is to explicitly ask zsh to compile certain chunky plugins(think your syntax highlighters and completion plugins) into wordcode. - Source: dev.to / 5 months ago
  • Finding Terminal Utopia
    Lastly, let’s make what commands we’re running easier to read, using zsh-syntax-highlighting. This script (which must be loaded before the zsh-history-substring-search above) will provide syntax highlighting of commands as you write them. This will help you avoid typos for incorrect commands, and make complex commands easier to read. - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Essential Terminal Settings for macOS
    Git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting. - Source: dev.to / over 1 year ago
  • [Question] What are the best plugins for zsh ?
    Two by far the most popular plugins are zsh-syntax-highlighting and zsh-autosuggestions. They are of high quality and quite useful. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Configuração do Windows para desenvolvimento
    Echo "Installing zsh-autosuggestions" Git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions Echo "Installing zsh-syntax-highlighting" Git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-syntax-highlighting Echo "Installing asdf" Git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf. - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Insomnia REST and Zsh Syntax Highlighting, you can also consider the following products

Postman - The Collaboration Platform for API Development

Asciidoctor - In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

Hoppscotch - Open source API development ecosystem

prism.js - Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

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

Docusaurus - Easy to maintain open source documentation websites