It's a shame what happened to Postman. It started as an excellent little developer tool for testing APIs. Then for some reason they raised over $400M in funding and hired 1,500+ employees, for what should have been a tiny OSS/passion project like curl or little snitch. Instead they now have to justify their valuation by forcing logins, collecting data, monthly subscriptions, AI features, etc.
I still don't know how they're valued at $5B+ when I don't know a single developer who actually uses it anymore
aliasxneo 17 minutes ago [-]
> I still don't know how they're valued at $5B+ when I don't know a single developer who actually uses it anymore
B2B maybe? Usually these businesses thrive solely on flirting with the CTO and getting them to sign a lucrative contract and then mandate internal usage. I'm speaking from experience.
cute_boi 12 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
radicalbyte 13 minutes ago [-]
Oh THAT'S what they're trying. Doesn't work on me %)
alfanick 11 minutes ago [-]
I cannot imagine 1500+ employees "working" on this. Wtf, it's a single person project.
autoexec 10 minutes ago [-]
> Instead they now have to justify their valuation by forcing logins, collecting data, monthly subscriptions, AI features, etc.
All those people who gave them millions in funding are expecting to make a return on that investment and that means prioritizing turning it into something that will make money by selling out users. The valuation is just a guess at how successful it will be at screwing users over. Greed ruins everything.
Yes a prime example of enshittification. You attract attention making something humble in scope but good.. but then it is compelled to become something much more. Same story with Coursera imo
liendolucas 14 minutes ago [-]
Postman valued at 5 billon? WTF? I mean the IT industry lives in fart cloud honestly. I really really think everything is just a little bit overvalued, isn't it?
People should be using curl + bash. It's a universal combination available almost everywhere.
embedding-shape 17 minutes ago [-]
> I still don't know how they're valued at $5B+ when I don't know a single developer who actually uses it anymore
I think most people here on HN is within or close by the "Innovators" part of the "Technology adoption life cycle" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle). When Postman hit mainstream, it was already bloated and ruined, and "Innovators" had already moved on to something else, but for Postman that's just the beginning, as they're in the "Early Majority" part, and still have a tail to ride, so investors and everyone else can extract all the value from the remaining s̶u̶c̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ users.
sneak 19 minutes ago [-]
This is why the right to fork exists in open source licenses. It’s easier than ever now, too, thanks to LLMs. You might even be able to oneshot forking and removing the malware and rebranding and rebuilding f/oss crapware these days.
I’ve been considering setting up a nonprofit solely to do this and to republish things like Mattermost, Stats, Bitwarden, etc with the corporate antifeatures ripped out.
FuriouslyAdrift 5 minutes ago [-]
Bruno. Open source base, runs locally, data remains on your infrastructure.
We went to bruno years ago and has been good. Nice to be able to store the request definitions in git. But to be honest, don't really need any of these tools anymore.
georgel 27 minutes ago [-]
Postman went from a great lightweight tool to a bloated up-selling mess.
wolttam 23 minutes ago [-]
As do all great things once VC sinks its teeth in.
Waterluvian 26 minutes ago [-]
I replaced that garbage with Insomnia years back. I’m just waiting until I hear that Insomnia is also a problem and where to go next.
mzajc 23 minutes ago [-]
Insomnia 8.0 and above requires an account on their servers to use. The stated reason was that this makes it easier to advertise to you. No thanks.
Bruno is a serviceable replacement that is local first.
amflare 13 minutes ago [-]
I've been using Insomnia whenever I can since before Covid. Its been nice, but ever since they started pushing accounts so aggressively, I've switched to Yaak to get back to that feel of a simple API client that prompted me to switch to Insomia in the first place. 100% recommend. https://yaak.app/
Waterluvian 8 minutes ago [-]
That looks appealing but the existence of a Pricing page tells me it's just a matter of time.
I have a sense that a dumb Web API testing UI application is really not that hard to get AI to implement. These apps all look about the same for a reason. So maybe there will be a prevailing FOSS option that isn't trying to monetize.
gschier 1 minutes ago [-]
Yaak creator here! The commercial-use license is my best attempt at aligning incentives between me and the user, while still funding the project's future.
FYI the license terms only apply to the prebuilt binaries. You can build and run from source for any use (including commercial), for free.
Happy to answer any questions as well.
georgel 24 minutes ago [-]
Just installed it, it's funny their landing page is littered with every AI buzzword too. But I am going to give Insomnia a try, I've heard people talk about it and a few others on HN over the years. I just need a glorified cURL GUI at the end of the day.
debo_ 23 minutes ago [-]
I use Bruno. I forget what Insomnia did that irritated me, but Bruno is the closest I've found to a dumb client that doesn't pester me for an account.
jmuguy 21 minutes ago [-]
Yeah it got bought by Kong a while back, and they're definitely not a great company, but the application itself still seems pretty OK.
I really like that you can paste a curl in to setup a new request.
This is definitely the type of app that some AI agent could cobble together pretty quickly, so I don't know why Postman etc thinks they have enough of a moat to keep enshittifying their product.
ediamondscience 16 minutes ago [-]
I don't understand how postman became the tool that it is today. The best version of it was just a logger and a formatter on top of an http client. The proto import was nice for gRPC. Who thought that relatively simple tool needed accounts and MCPs and whatever else they've thrown into it?
toddmorey 18 minutes ago [-]
Why do all these tools require a paid account? Bruno specifically says it’s platform-free and stores everything in git.
I really don't see the point of Postman. It used to be light and efficient, now it's bloated and inefficient
stillpointlab 9 minutes ago [-]
If there ever was a tool that could be vibe coded, a postman-like is the one.
arttaboi 16 minutes ago [-]
Never liked Postman since they started forcing everyone to signup. Sometimes I hate VCs who unnecessarily funds and ruins a perfectly fine product (of course founders are equally guilty).
richwater 24 minutes ago [-]
Postman went from a nice tool to an almost virus in just a few years. It's crazy that anyone still uses it.
Switched to Bruno myself, and moved my team to it last year as well. Vast improvement over late stage Postman.
moi2388 20 minutes ago [-]
Thank god we moved to Bruno and sometimes just http files in vs code or jetbrains
languagehacker 14 minutes ago [-]
I've always kind of thought that Postman was an enshittification story waiting to happen. I've always felt like they prey on people who just aren't comfortable with the command line, and so there isn't much more stooping lower for them than something like this.
plagiarist 17 minutes ago [-]
Unsurprising. I loved the tool but it was obviously time to drop it when they began pushing for logins.
orphereus 25 minutes ago [-]
Does everything have to go to shit when money is involved?
pizzafeelsright 13 minutes ago [-]
No. Postman sells nothing of value.
At this point I do not see why the entirety of their software could not be a one shot prompt for the price of deer nuts.
lenerdenator 22 minutes ago [-]
Until we stop relying on SV as the standard-bearer for tech culture? Absolutely.
Surac 23 minutes ago [-]
who the hell needs that. skills are just md files
fifilura 10 minutes ago [-]
Or pre-AI it was a python script inside a notebook.
Rendered at 18:04:09 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
I still don't know how they're valued at $5B+ when I don't know a single developer who actually uses it anymore
B2B maybe? Usually these businesses thrive solely on flirting with the CTO and getting them to sign a lucrative contract and then mandate internal usage. I'm speaking from experience.
All those people who gave them millions in funding are expecting to make a return on that investment and that means prioritizing turning it into something that will make money by selling out users. The valuation is just a guess at how successful it will be at screwing users over. Greed ruins everything.
People should be using curl + bash. It's a universal combination available almost everywhere.
I think most people here on HN is within or close by the "Innovators" part of the "Technology adoption life cycle" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_adoption_life_cycle). When Postman hit mainstream, it was already bloated and ruined, and "Innovators" had already moved on to something else, but for Postman that's just the beginning, as they're in the "Early Majority" part, and still have a tail to ride, so investors and everyone else can extract all the value from the remaining s̶u̶c̶k̶e̶r̶s̶ users.
I’ve been considering setting up a nonprofit solely to do this and to republish things like Mattermost, Stats, Bitwarden, etc with the corporate antifeatures ripped out.
https://www.usebruno.com/
Older versions are fine, though.
https://github.com/Kong/insomnia/discussions/6590
I have a sense that a dumb Web API testing UI application is really not that hard to get AI to implement. These apps all look about the same for a reason. So maybe there will be a prevailing FOSS option that isn't trying to monetize.
FYI the license terms only apply to the prebuilt binaries. You can build and run from source for any use (including commercial), for free.
Happy to answer any questions as well.
I really like that you can paste a curl in to setup a new request.
This is definitely the type of app that some AI agent could cobble together pretty quickly, so I don't know why Postman etc thinks they have enough of a moat to keep enshittifying their product.
I'm currently using Bruno (https://www.usebruno.com/)
Works well enough without getting in my way.
At this point I do not see why the entirety of their software could not be a one shot prompt for the price of deer nuts.