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  5. Insomnia REST Client vs Pact

Insomnia REST Client vs Pact

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Insomnia REST Client
Insomnia REST Client
Stacks800
Followers652
Votes44
Pact
Pact
Stacks59
Followers79
Votes0
GitHub Stars221
Forks90

Insomnia REST Client vs Pact: What are the differences?

## Key Differences between Insomnia REST Client and Pact

<Write introduction here>

1. **Purpose**: Insomnia REST Client is primarily used for testing API endpoints and debugging API calls, while Pact is a consumer-driven contract testing tool that ensures compatibility between service consumers and providers.
2. **Implementation**: Insomnia is a standalone desktop application that allows developers to interact with APIs directly, whereas Pact is a library that needs to be integrated into the testing environment and used in conjunction with testing frameworks.
3. **Testing Scope**: Insomnia focuses on testing individual API endpoints and their responses, enabling developers to validate functionality, while Pact focuses on testing the interactions and contracts between different services in a distributed system.
4. **Collaboration**: Insomnia is more tailored for individual developers working on API-related tasks, providing features for personal use and management, whereas Pact is designed for teams collaborating on microservices projects, ensuring communication and contract compliance between teams.
5. **Compatibility Checking**: Insomnia checks compatibility and functionality at the API level, ensuring endpoints work as intended, while Pact checks compatibility at the contract level, ensuring that various services can communicate effectively based on predefined contracts.
6. **Community Support**: Insomnia has a large community of users contributing plugins, themes, and extensions to enhance the functionality of the tool, while Pact has a growing community focused on improving consumer-driven contract testing practices and frameworks.

In Summary, Insomnia and Pact serve different purposes in the API testing and contract testing realms, catering to individual developers and collaborative teams, respectively.

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Advice on Insomnia REST Client, Pact

Stephen
Stephen

Artificial Intelligence Fellow

Feb 4, 2020

Decided

Postman supports automation and organization in a way that Insomnia just doesn't. Admittedly, Insomnia makes it slightly easy to query the data that you get back (in a very MongoDB-esque query language) but Postman sets you up to develop the code that you would use in development/testing right in the editor.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Insomnia REST Client
Insomnia REST Client
Pact
Pact

Insomnia is a powerful REST API Client with cookie management, environment variables, code generation, and authentication for Mac, Window, and Linux.

It is a code-first tool for testing HTTP and message integrations using contract tests. Contract tests assert that inter-application messages conform to a shared understanding that is documented in a contract. Without contract testing, the only way to ensure that applications will work correctly together is by using expensive and brittle integration tests.

Mac, Windows and Linux;Data import/export;SSL client certificates;Response history;JSONPath and XPath;Preview rendered HTML;Multipart form;Query parameter editor;Configurable proxy;Cloud sync and sharing;Nunjucks templating;Filter requests;Toggle SSL validation;Keyboard shortcuts;Configurable timeout;HAR import;Usable at almost all sizes;Drag-n-drop organization;Responsive interface;Import from curl;
Support for JavaScript, JVM, .NET, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Swift and more; Get fast, reliable feedback on the compatibility of your integrations; Ensures all your services are compatible with each other before you deploy
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
221
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
90
Stacks
800
Stacks
59
Followers
652
Followers
79
Votes
44
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 16
    Easy to work with
  • 11
    Great user interface
  • 6
    Works with GraphQL
  • 4
    Cross platform, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux
  • 3
    Opensource
Cons
  • 4
    Do not have team sharing options
  • 2
    Do not store credentials in HTTP
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
JavaScript
JavaScript
Ruby
Ruby
Python
Python
.NET
.NET
Golang
Golang
PHP
PHP
Swift
Swift

What are some alternatives to Insomnia REST Client, Pact?

Postman

Postman

It is the only complete API development environment, used by nearly five million developers and more than 100,000 companies worldwide.

Paw

Paw

Paw is a full-featured and beautifully designed Mac app that makes interaction with REST services delightful. Either you are an API maker or consumer, Paw helps you build HTTP requests, inspect the server's response and even generate client code.

Karate DSL

Karate DSL

Combines API test-automation, mocks and performance-testing into a single, unified framework. The BDD syntax popularized by Cucumber is language-neutral, and easy for even non-programmers. Besides powerful JSON & XML assertions, you can run tests in parallel for speed - which is critical for HTTP API testing.

Appwrite

Appwrite

Appwrite's open-source platform lets you add Auth, DBs, Functions and Storage to your product and build any application at any scale, own your data, and use your preferred coding languages and tools.

Runscope

Runscope

Keep tabs on all aspects of your API's performance with uptime monitoring, integration testing, logging and real-time monitoring.

Istio

Istio

Istio is an open platform for providing a uniform way to integrate microservices, manage traffic flow across microservices, enforce policies and aggregate telemetry data. Istio's control plane provides an abstraction layer over the underlying cluster management platform, such as Kubernetes, Mesos, etc.

RAML

RAML

RESTful API Modeling Language (RAML) makes it easy to manage the whole API lifecycle from design to sharing. It's concise - you only write what you need to define - and reusable. It is machine readable API design that is actually human friendly.

Apigee

Apigee

API management, design, analytics, and security are at the heart of modern digital architecture. The Apigee intelligent API platform is a complete solution for moving business to the digital world.

Azure Service Fabric

Azure Service Fabric

Azure Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud apps.

Hoppscotch

Hoppscotch

It is a free, fast and beautiful API request builder. It helps you create requests faster, saving precious time on development

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