Why Reqable Could Be the Next Postman Killer for API Testing

Postman, once the dominant REST testing tool, suffers from performance issues, mandatory login, and commercial charges, prompting many developers to seek alternatives. Reqable emerges as a cross‑platform solution aiming to address these shortcomings.

1. Free Functionality

Earlier community versions limited API collections and tags, but the latest release removes these restrictions, allowing unlimited request sending and collection saving at no cost, making it a practical Postman replacement.

2. Strong Performance

Developed with Flutter and C++, Reqable offers rapid startup, low memory consumption, minimal storage footprint, and smooth interaction. Benchmarks on a 2017 MacBook Pro show dramatically shorter launch times and lower idle memory compared to Postman, Apifox, Apipost, Bruno, and Insomnia.

Testing methodology: launch time measured by analyzing frame differences in a screen recording; memory usage recorded when the freshly installed app is placed in the background.

3. Clean UI

The interface is minimalistic. Users focusing solely on API testing should select API测试 during initialization or switch to 禅模式 later for a cleaner view.

Additional themes include light and dark modes, 15 code color schemes, and 16 accent color schemes (customizable in the paid version).

4. Data Migration

Reqable can import data from other REST tools such as Postman, Hoppscotch, ApiPost, ApiFox, cURL, and HAR. Upcoming releases will add OpenAPI and Insomnia import support.

5. HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 Support

Unlike many competitors, Reqable supports testing over HTTP/2 and HTTP/3 (QUIC), which modern servers increasingly require.

6. Packet Capture and Debugging

Beyond standard API testing features (environment variables, Python scripts, code generation), Reqable offers packet capture, allowing traffic analysis and direct creation of API tests from captured requests. This helps map remote server calls to local environments and quickly pinpoint issues.

7. Active Community

Although both Reqable and Postman are commercial closed‑source products, Reqable maintains an active GitHub community. In under two years, users have submitted over 1,000 issues, with about 80% resolved.

8. Open‑Source Contributions

Built on the open‑source Flutter framework, Reqable contributes components such as the re‑editor code editor and re‑highlight syntax library, which are leveraged by other projects.

9. Resources

Official site: https://reqable.com/zh-CN/

GitHub repository: https://github.com/reqable/reqable-app