Alternatives to Retrofit logo

Alternatives to Retrofit

OkHttp, Postman, Insomnia REST Client, RestSharp, and OpenAPI are the most popular alternatives and competitors to Retrofit.
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What is Retrofit and what are its top alternatives?

Retrofit turns your HTTP API into a Java interface
Retrofit is a tool in the API Tools category of a tech stack.
Retrofit is an open source tool with 42.5K GitHub stars and 7.3K GitHub forks. Here’s a link to Retrofit's open source repository on GitHub

Top Alternatives to Retrofit

  • OkHttp
    OkHttp

    HTTP is the way modern applications network. It’s how we exchange data & media. Doing HTTP efficiently makes your stuff load faster and saves bandwidth. ...

  • Postman
    Postman

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

  • Insomnia REST Client
    Insomnia REST Client

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

  • RestSharp
    RestSharp

    It is probably the most popular HTTP client library for .NET. Featuring automatic serialization and deserialization, request and response type detection, variety of authentications and other useful features ...

  • OpenAPI
    OpenAPI

    It is a publicly available application programming interface that provides developers with programmatic access to a proprietary software application or web service. ...

  • OpenAPI Specification
    OpenAPI Specification

    It defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to RESTful APIs which allows both humans and computers to discover and understand the capabilities of the service without access to source code, documentation, or through network traffic inspection. ...

  • 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. ...

  • 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. ...

Retrofit alternatives & related posts

OkHttp logo

OkHttp

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An open source HTTP client
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PROS OF OKHTTP
    Be the first to leave a pro
    CONS OF OKHTTP
      Be the first to leave a con

      related OkHttp posts

      Postman logo

      Postman

      92.2K
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      1.8K
      Only complete API development environment
      92.2K
      78.7K
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      1.8K
      PROS OF POSTMAN
      • 490
        Easy to use
      • 369
        Great tool
      • 276
        Makes developing rest api's easy peasy
      • 156
        Easy setup, looks good
      • 144
        The best api workflow out there
      • 53
        It's the best
      • 53
        History feature
      • 44
        Adds real value to my workflow
      • 43
        Great interface that magically predicts your needs
      • 35
        The best in class app
      • 12
        Can save and share script
      • 10
        Fully featured without looking cluttered
      • 8
        Collections
      • 8
        Option to run scrips
      • 8
        Global/Environment Variables
      • 7
        Shareable Collections
      • 7
        Dead simple and useful. Excellent
      • 7
        Dark theme easy on the eyes
      • 6
        Awesome customer support
      • 6
        Great integration with newman
      • 5
        Documentation
      • 5
        Simple
      • 5
        The test script is useful
      • 4
        Saves responses
      • 4
        This has simplified my testing significantly
      • 4
        Makes testing API's as easy as 1,2,3
      • 4
        Easy as pie
      • 3
        API-network
      • 3
        I'd recommend it to everyone who works with apis
      • 3
        Mocking API calls with predefined response
      • 2
        Now supports GraphQL
      • 2
        Postman Runner CI Integration
      • 2
        Easy to setup, test and provides test storage
      • 2
        Continuous integration using newman
      • 2
        Pre-request Script and Test attributes are invaluable
      • 2
        Runner
      • 2
        Graph
      • 1
        <a href="http://fixbit.com/">useful tool</a>
      CONS OF POSTMAN
      • 10
        Stores credentials in HTTP
      • 9
        Bloated features and UI
      • 8
        Cumbersome to switch authentication tokens
      • 7
        Poor GraphQL support
      • 5
        Expensive
      • 3
        Not free after 5 users
      • 3
        Can't prompt for per-request variables
      • 1
        Import swagger
      • 1
        Support websocket
      • 1
        Import curl

      related Postman posts

      Noah Zoschke
      Engineering Manager at Segment · | 30 upvotes · 2.7M views

      We just launched the Segment Config API (try it out for yourself here) — a set of public REST APIs that enable you to manage your Segment configuration. A public API is only as good as its #documentation. For the API reference doc we are using Postman.

      Postman is an “API development environment”. You download the desktop app, and build API requests by URL and payload. Over time you can build up a set of requests and organize them into a “Postman Collection”. You can generalize a collection with “collection variables”. This allows you to parameterize things like username, password and workspace_name so a user can fill their own values in before making an API call. This makes it possible to use Postman for one-off API tasks instead of writing code.

      Then you can add Markdown content to the entire collection, a folder of related methods, and/or every API method to explain how the APIs work. You can publish a collection and easily share it with a URL.

      This turns Postman from a personal #API utility to full-blown public interactive API documentation. The result is a great looking web page with all the API calls, docs and sample requests and responses in one place. Check out the results here.

      Postman’s powers don’t end here. You can automate Postman with “test scripts” and have it periodically run a collection scripts as “monitors”. We now have #QA around all the APIs in public docs to make sure they are always correct

      Along the way we tried other techniques for documenting APIs like ReadMe.io or Swagger UI. These required a lot of effort to customize.

      Writing and maintaining a Postman collection takes some work, but the resulting documentation site, interactivity and API testing tools are well worth it.

      See more
      Simon Reymann
      Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH · | 27 upvotes · 4.7M views

      Our whole Node.js backend stack consists of the following tools:

      • Lerna as a tool for multi package and multi repository management
      • npm as package manager
      • NestJS as Node.js framework
      • TypeScript as programming language
      • ExpressJS as web server
      • Swagger UI for visualizing and interacting with the API’s resources
      • Postman as a tool for API development
      • TypeORM as object relational mapping layer
      • JSON Web Token for access token management

      The main reason we have chosen Node.js over PHP is related to the following artifacts:

      • Made for the web and widely in use: Node.js is a software platform for developing server-side network services. Well-known projects that rely on Node.js include the blogging software Ghost, the project management tool Trello and the operating system WebOS. Node.js requires the JavaScript runtime environment V8, which was specially developed by Google for the popular Chrome browser. This guarantees a very resource-saving architecture, which qualifies Node.js especially for the operation of a web server. Ryan Dahl, the developer of Node.js, released the first stable version on May 27, 2009. He developed Node.js out of dissatisfaction with the possibilities that JavaScript offered at the time. The basic functionality of Node.js has been mapped with JavaScript since the first version, which can be expanded with a large number of different modules. The current package managers (npm or Yarn) for Node.js know more than 1,000,000 of these modules.
      • Fast server-side solutions: Node.js adopts the JavaScript "event-loop" to create non-blocking I/O applications that conveniently serve simultaneous events. With the standard available asynchronous processing within JavaScript/TypeScript, highly scalable, server-side solutions can be realized. The efficient use of the CPU and the RAM is maximized and more simultaneous requests can be processed than with conventional multi-thread servers.
      • A language along the entire stack: Widely used frameworks such as React or AngularJS or Vue.js, which we prefer, are written in JavaScript/TypeScript. If Node.js is now used on the server side, you can use all the advantages of a uniform script language throughout the entire application development. The same language in the back- and frontend simplifies the maintenance of the application and also the coordination within the development team.
      • Flexibility: Node.js sets very few strict dependencies, rules and guidelines and thus grants a high degree of flexibility in application development. There are no strict conventions so that the appropriate architecture, design structures, modules and features can be freely selected for the development.
      See more
      Insomnia REST Client logo

      Insomnia REST Client

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      44
      The most intuitive cross-platform REST API Client 😴
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      PROS OF INSOMNIA REST CLIENT
      • 16
        Easy to work with
      • 11
        Great user interface
      • 6
        Works with GraphQL
      • 4
        Cross platform, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux
      • 3
        Opensource
      • 2
        Vim and Emacs key map
      • 2
        Preserves request templates
      • 0
        Does not have history feature
      CONS OF INSOMNIA REST CLIENT
      • 4
        Do not have team sharing options
      • 2
        Do not store credentials in HTTP

      related Insomnia REST Client posts

      Jason Barry
      Cofounder at FeaturePeek · | 4 upvotes · 2.4M views

      We've tried a couple REST clients over the years, and Insomnia REST Client has won us over the most. Here's what we like about it compared to other contenders in this category:

      • Uncluttered UI. Things are only in your face when you need them, and the app is visually organized in an intuitive manner.
      • Native Mac app. We wanted the look and feel to be on par with other apps in our OS rather than a web app / Electron app (cough Postman).
      • Easy team sync. Other apps have this too, but Insomnia's model best sets the "set and forget" mentality. Syncs are near instant and I'm always assured that I'm working on the latest version of API endpoints. Apps like Paw use a git-based approach to revision history, but I think this actually over-complicates the sync feature. For ensuring I'm always working on the latest version of something, I'd rather have the sync model be closer to Dropbox's than git's, and Insomnia is closer to Dropbox in that regard.

      Some features like automatic public-facing documentation aren't supported, but we currently don't have any public APIs, so this didn't matter to us.

      See more
      RestSharp logo

      RestSharp

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      0
      Simple REST and HTTP API Client for .NET
      767
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      PROS OF RESTSHARP
        Be the first to leave a pro
        CONS OF RESTSHARP
          Be the first to leave a con

          related RestSharp posts

          OpenAPI logo

          OpenAPI

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          Allows the owner of a network-accessible service to give universal access
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          PROS OF OPENAPI
          • 1
            The most popular api spec
          • 1
            Easy to learn
          • 1
            Supports versioning
          • 1
            Supports authentication
          • 1
            Supports caching
          CONS OF OPENAPI
            Be the first to leave a con

            related OpenAPI posts

            Joshua Dean Küpper
            CEO at Scrayos UG (haftungsbeschränkt) · | 4 upvotes · 469.1K views

            We use Swagger Inspector in conjunction with our universal REST-API "Charon". Swagger Inspector makes testing edge-cases hassle-free and lets testing look easy. Swagger Inspector was also a great help to explore the Mojang-API, that we are dependent on, because it is the central repository for minecraft-account-data.

            We previously used Postman but decided to switch over to Swagger Inspector because it also integrated seamlessly into Swagger UI, which we use for displaying our OpenAPI specification of said REST-API.

            See more
            OpenAPI Specification logo

            OpenAPI Specification

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            10
            An API description format for REST APIs
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            + 1
            10
            PROS OF OPENAPI SPECIFICATION
            • 5
              API Documentation
            • 5
              API Specification
            CONS OF OPENAPI SPECIFICATION
              Be the first to leave a con

              related OpenAPI Specification posts

              Apigee logo

              Apigee

              235
              686
              29
              Intelligent and complete API platform
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              686
              + 1
              29
              PROS OF APIGEE
              • 12
                Highly scalable and secure API Management Platform
              • 6
                Quick jumpstart
              • 5
                Good documentation
              • 3
                Fast and adjustable caching
              • 3
                Easy to use
              CONS OF APIGEE
              • 11
                Expensive
              • 1
                Doesn't support hybrid natively

              related Apigee posts

              Paw logo

              Paw

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              164
              The ultimate REST client for Mac
              234
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              164
              PROS OF PAW
              • 46
                Great interface
              • 37
                Easy to use
              • 25
                More stable and performant than the others
              • 16
                Saves endpoints list for testing
              • 13
                Supports environment variables
              • 12
                Integrations
              • 9
                Multi-Dimension Environment Settings
              • 4
                Paste curl commands into Paw
              • 2
                Creates code for any language or framework
              CONS OF PAW
              • 3
                It's not free
              • 2
                MacOS Only

              related Paw posts

              Jason Barry
              Cofounder at FeaturePeek · | 4 upvotes · 2.4M views

              We've tried a couple REST clients over the years, and Insomnia REST Client has won us over the most. Here's what we like about it compared to other contenders in this category:

              • Uncluttered UI. Things are only in your face when you need them, and the app is visually organized in an intuitive manner.
              • Native Mac app. We wanted the look and feel to be on par with other apps in our OS rather than a web app / Electron app (cough Postman).
              • Easy team sync. Other apps have this too, but Insomnia's model best sets the "set and forget" mentality. Syncs are near instant and I'm always assured that I'm working on the latest version of API endpoints. Apps like Paw use a git-based approach to revision history, but I think this actually over-complicates the sync feature. For ensuring I'm always working on the latest version of something, I'd rather have the sync model be closer to Dropbox's than git's, and Insomnia is closer to Dropbox in that regard.

              Some features like automatic public-facing documentation aren't supported, but we currently don't have any public APIs, so this didn't matter to us.

              See more