Insomnia vs Hoppscotch: when a self-hosted workspace server is the right choice
The decision usually starts with a renewal notice, a seat price change or a data residency rule that makes Kong's cloud hard to justify for shared API collections. Kong Insomnia fits teams that accept Kong's account model and want a vendor-run service. Self-hosted Hoppscotch fits teams that need shared workspaces, single sign-on and audit trails on servers they control. Neither answer is wrong in general; the right one depends on what your organization has to keep inside its own walls.
Hoppscotch Community Edition is free and open source under the MIT License, but you install, administer and upgrade it yourself. It runs as Docker containers or a Helm chart on Kubernetes, stores team data in a PostgreSQL database set through DATABASE_URL, and signs users in through the Email, GitHub, Google or Microsoft providers you configure, with SMTP for email. SAML SSO, OpenID Connect, SCIM provisioning and audit logs sit in the Enterprise Edition, which requires a license key. Confirm with Hoppscotch which features your sign-in model needs before you assume a tier, and confirm the current release on its GitHub releases page before you plan an upgrade window.
Three questions should drive the choice. First, who will run the server: a platform team with container and database skills, or a vendor partner under a written scope. Second, which SSO tier you need, because Community Edition covers the common social and email options while SCIM and SAML belong to the paid tier. Third, whether protocol coverage matches your APIs. Check that the features you rely on in Insomnia, such as the protocols and authentication flows your services use, appear in Hoppscotch's documentation, and run a pilot collection through both tools before you commit.
Which option fits which team
This table maps common team situations to the better fit between Kong Insomnia and a self-hosted Hoppscotch instance, with the reason for each. Read the first column to find your situation, then check the reason before deciding, since most choices depend on where collections may live and who will run the server.
| Team situation | Better fit | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Small team wanting shared workspaces without running a server | Insomnia or Hoppscotch Cloud, to confirm with each vendor | Self-hosting Hoppscotch means someone installs, upgrades and backs up the instance, so a team with no server to run may prefer a hosted option. Confirm current plan terms before choosing. |
| Regulated team that must keep collections off vendor cloud | Self-hosted Hoppscotch Community Edition or offline Bruno | Hoppscotch stores team workspaces in a PostgreSQL database you control, and Bruno keeps collections as local files, so credentials stay on infrastructure you manage. |
| Team that needs SAML SSO and SCIM provisioning | Self-hosted Hoppscotch Enterprise Edition | Community Edition signs users in through Email, GitHub, Google and Microsoft OAuth, while the Enterprise Edition adds SAML-based SSO, SCIM user and group provisioning and audit logs. It requires a license key. |
| Team with no platform staff to run an instance | Offline Bruno or a hosted service, rather than self-hosting Hoppscotch | Community Edition is installed, administered and updated by the user, with community forum support. Without staff for upgrades and backups, a file-based client has less to operate. |
| Team that wants collections in Git and CI test runs | Bruno, with bru run, or Hoppscotch CLI with hopp test | Bruno stores collections as files for Git review, and both tools can produce test reports for CI. The Hoppscotch CLI is described as alpha and needs Node.js 22 or later. |
| Team migrating from Insomnia with an existing organization | Self-hosted Hoppscotch, if workspaces must stay on your server | Hoppscotch's importer accepts Insomnia collections and environments, with a 50 MB limit on self-hosted editions. Confirm workspace and member recreation steps before cutover. |
Where the data sits and who controls access
Insomnia and a self-hosted Hoppscotch instance place collections, credentials and user accounts in different locations and under different owners. The cards below cover where the data lives, how secrets are handled, how people sign in and what evidence your team must gather for its own assessments.
Where collections are stored
Insomnia Cloud Sync and Git Sync keep project data under Kong's account model, so the storage location depends on the sync option and plan you use. A self-hosted Hoppscotch Community Edition instance stores team workspaces in the PostgreSQL database that you point at with DATABASE_URL. Ask Kong to confirm, in writing, where each sync option stores data and for how long. Then confirm which hosts and backups your own database would live on, and who can read them.
Handling embedded credentials
Collections often carry API keys, bearer tokens and basic auth values in headers, auth tabs and environment variables. Before moving any collection, decide which values belong in environments that stay out of exports and which must be removed. Review exported files before they leave Insomnia, and confirm that a self-hosted Hoppscotch database and its backups are covered by the same secret-handling rules as your other production data.
Sign-in options in Community Edition
Community Edition users sign in through Email, GitHub, Google or Microsoft OAuth providers that your administrator configures, and email sign-in needs working SMTP settings. Insomnia accounts instead use Kong's identity system. Decide which providers your organization allows, whether personal accounts are acceptable for shared work, and how an account is disabled when someone leaves the team, then test that process before rollout.
SAML and OIDC in Enterprise
The Hoppscotch Enterprise Edition adds SAML-based SSO and OpenID Connect, along with SCIM user and group provisioning, which lets your identity provider create, update and remove accounts. This is the route to centrally managed access for larger teams. Confirm with Hoppscotch which identity providers and attribute mappings are supported for your tenant, and ask how a license key is issued and renewed, since the Enterprise Edition requires one.
Evidence your team must produce
A self-hosted instance moves control evidence into your hands. Your team needs records of who can administer the server, how sign-in is configured, how backups are tested, how upgrades are approved and how audit logs are kept. DeployOpen can plan, implement and document these controls and prepare the evidence, but it does not issue audit reports, attestations or certifications. Independent auditors and certification bodies make that determination, so agree the evidence list with your assessor before work begins.
Audit logs and access reviews
Activity and audit logs are part of the Hoppscotch Enterprise Edition, which matters when you need to show who changed a shared workspace. Community Edition administrators should plan their own logging for the server, the database and the reverse proxy. Ask Insomnia which activity records its paid tiers expose and how long they are kept, then schedule periodic access reviews that compare workspace members with your current staff list.
What running a Hoppscotch server involves
Running Hoppscotch yourself means you own the install, upgrades and backups. The Community Edition is packaged as Docker containers, either as separate frontend, backend and admin images or as one all-in-one container, and Hoppscotch also documents a Helm chart for Kubernetes. Pick the packaging that matches how your platform team already runs workloads, then confirm the current image tags and upgrade steps in the Community Edition install and build guide before you commit. The current release is 2026.9.0, so check it against the GitHub releases page when you plan the first deployment and each upgrade window.
Plan the host before you install. The prerequisites documentation lists 4 CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM to generate the build image, and as little as 1 CPU core and 2 GB of RAM to host the output. Data is stored in PostgreSQL, set through DATABASE_URL, so a database you can back up and restore is part of the scope. Sign-in uses Email, GitHub, Google or Microsoft OAuth providers that your administrator configures, and email features need SMTP settings. Ask who will own the mail relay and the OAuth app registrations, because both are common causes of a failed first login.
Support and release cadence differ by edition. Community Edition ships quarterly releases, and help comes from the community forum, so the patching schedule and any incident response sit with your team. The Enterprise Edition adds SAML-based SSO, OpenID Connect, priority support and guaranteed quarterly updates, and requires a license key. Ask Hoppscotch to confirm in writing which edition, support hours and update commitments apply to your deployment, and compare those with the time your own staff would spend on upgrades and on-call work.
What each option costs to own
Insomnia, Hoppscotch Community Edition and Hoppscotch Enterprise each charge in a different place: seats, a license key, or your own servers and staff time. The cards below separate what you pay a vendor from what you pay your own team, and what happens once versus every year.
Insomnia seats and tier
Insomnia's cost is set by the paid tier you buy and the number of seats on it. Most cloud features, including Cloud Sync and Git Sync, depend on a Kong account, so the per-seat invoice is the recurring line. Ask Kong which features each tier includes, how Git Sync user limits apply to your team size, and whether seat counts can change mid-term. Confirm the seat count and tier in writing before comparing totals.
Hoppscotch Community Edition labor
The Community Edition has no license fee, but you pay for everything around it: a server to run the containers and PostgreSQL database, an SMTP service for sign-in email, and time to install, upgrade and back up the instance. Hoppscotch's documentation says you install, administer and update it yourself, with quarterly releases and community forum support. Estimate these hours with your platform team rather than assuming they are zero.
Enterprise license and seat pricing
Hoppscotch Enterprise Edition requires a license key and adds SAML SSO, OpenID Connect, SCIM provisioning and audit logs. Hoppscotch's pricing page lists Enterprise at $11 per user per month, billed annually, as Hoppscotch's own list price. Treat that figure as a published starting point, and ask Hoppscotch for a written quote covering your user count, support terms and any license key conditions.
Cloud reference rates only
Hoppscotch Cloud is a hosted option, not the self-hosted path this page compares. Its Business plan lists at $6 per user per month and Enterprise at $11, billed annually. Use these numbers only as a reference for what a hosted seat costs, since they exclude your hosting and staff time. They do not show what your self-hosted instance will cost.
One-time versus recurring costs
Migration work is mostly one-time: exporting Insomnia collections, importing them, recreating workspaces and members, and configuring OAuth or SSO. Recurring costs include seat or license fees, server hosting, SMTP, quarterly upgrades on the Community Edition, backup storage and admin time. Separating these lines lets you compare a three-year total instead of a single annual invoice.
Quote questions to ask
Ask Kong for seat pricing per tier, the features each tier includes, the term length and any price change clauses. Ask Hoppscotch whether the Enterprise license covers installation support, upgrade help and the number of users in scope. Ask your own team who patches the database, rotates secrets and restores backups, and how many hours that takes each quarter. Request all answers in writing.
How a move from Insomnia to Hoppscotch unfolds
The sequence takes a team from an Insomnia organization to a self-hosted Hoppscotch instance where collections, environments and sign-in sit on servers the team controls. Each step ends with a check that confirms the previous one worked.
Inventory Insomnia projects and collections
An administrator or lead developer lists every Insomnia project, including Cloud Sync and Git Sync projects, and notes which collections, environments and workspaces the team still uses. Stale projects are marked for retirement so they do not travel into the new instance. The output is a short written inventory that names each project, its owner and whether it will move. Insomnia's own export options are covered in detail on the how to export your data page.
Export collections and environments from Insomnia
The person who owns each project exports collections and environments from Insomnia in a format Hoppscotch can read, using the export options described in the sibling export guide. Exports are saved to a controlled folder with restricted access, not to a shared drive. The check is that every project in the inventory has a corresponding export file that opens without errors.
Check secrets before files leave the app
Before any export is shared or uploaded to the server, a reviewer searches the files for embedded tokens, API keys, client secrets, passwords and environment values marked as secret. Credentials are moved into the target instance's environment settings or a secrets manager, and the source values are rotated where the team cannot confirm their exposure history. The check is a signed-off list showing each secret's new location and that no plaintext credentials remain in the files.
Import through the Insomnia importer
An administrator on the self-hosted Hoppscotch instance imports the exported files with the Insomnia importer. Hoppscotch's importer documentation sets the import size limit for self-hosted editions at 50 MB, so very large exports are split by project before upload. The check is that each imported collection shows the expected request count and that environment variables resolve as before.
Recreate workspaces and members
The administrator creates the team workspaces in Hoppscotch to match the inventory and adds members with the access level each person held in Insomnia. Ownership of each workspace is assigned to a named person, so the instance has no orphaned collections. The check is a workspace list that matches the inventory, with each member confirmed by the team lead.
Configure sign-in and SMTP
The platform team sets up how users sign in, choosing among the Email, GitHub, Google and Microsoft OAuth providers the Community Edition supports, and configures SMTP settings so email sign-in and invitations work. Teams that need SAML-based SSO, OpenID Connect provisioning, SCIM or audit logs must check the Enterprise Edition scope before go-live. The check is a test sign-in by one user from each provider in use, plus a test invitation that arrives in a mailbox.
Verify collections and retire Cloud Sync projects
Testers run representative requests in Hoppscotch against the same endpoints used in Insomnia and compare responses, and CI teams that use the Hoppscotch CLI confirm that hopp test still runs the migrated collections. Once the team accepts the results, Cloud Sync projects in Insomnia are removed or archived according to the inventory. The check is a signed record that the migrated collections pass and that the old projects are no longer the working copy. The sibling migration page covers the detailed steps for each part of this sequence.
Questions buyers ask before switching from Insomnia to Hoppscotch
What drives the cost of running a self-hosted Hoppscotch instance?
The software itself is free under the MIT License, so the cost is the infrastructure and the people who run it. Community Edition needs infrastructure for the build step, which the Hoppscotch prerequisites document lists at 4 CPU cores and 4 GB of RAM, and hosting for the output, which needs as little as 1 CPU core and 2 GB of RAM. You also pay for a PostgreSQL database, SMTP service for email, and staff time for installs, upgrades and backups. Enterprise Edition adds a license with per-user pricing, so ask Hoppscotch for a written quote against your seat count and support level. Hoppscotch's public pricing page lists Cloud plans per user per month, but that is a different product from a server you run. Compare these items with your current Insomnia seats in one spreadsheet.
How long does a migration from Insomnia to Hoppscotch take?
The duration depends on the size of your collections, how many workspaces and members you recreate, and how much sign-in setup your team needs. Exporting data and running Hoppscotch's Insomnia importer is usually the quick part. Recreating workspaces, checking environments and authentication settings, and configuring sign-in with Email, GitHub, Google or Microsoft OAuth usually take more time. Hoppscotch does not publish a standard migration duration in the material we rely on, so ask for a timeline in writing and confirm it against a pilot collection from your own environment. A fixed-scope engagement from DeployOpen would set the timeline in writing before work starts.
Can our team install and upgrade Hoppscotch without outside help?
Yes, if your platform team is comfortable running Docker containers or Kubernetes. Hoppscotch Community Edition is packaged as Docker containers, either as separate frontend, backend and admin images or as one all-in-one container, and a Helm chart guide covers Kubernetes. Under Community Edition, the user installs, administers and updates the instance, with quarterly releases and community forum support. Upgrades, database backups and monitoring are your responsibility. Enterprise Edition adds priority support and guaranteed quarterly updates. If your team lacks capacity for this, retainers for ongoing support and upgrades are available from DeployOpen, and the scope is agreed in writing.
Does SCIM provisioning require the Hoppscotch Enterprise Edition?
Yes. According to Hoppscotch's Enterprise Edition documentation, SCIM user and group provisioning is part of Enterprise Edition, which also includes SAML-based SSO, OpenID Connect, activity and audit logs, and user groups. It requires a license key. Community Edition signs users in through the Email, GitHub, Google and Microsoft OAuth providers you configure, but it does not provide SCIM. If your identity provider must push user lifecycle changes automatically, confirm the current SCIM connector support and license terms with Hoppscotch before you plan the rollout.
What does the 50 MB import limit mean for large Insomnia collections?
The Hoppscotch importer accepts Insomnia collections and environments, and the limit is 50 MB on self-hosted editions, compared with 10 MB on Hoppscotch Cloud. Most API collections are far smaller, but large collections with many example responses, binary bodies or embedded files can exceed it. Before you import, check the export file size and split large projects into smaller collections if needed. Confirm the limit against the current importer documentation for your version, and test the largest collection in a staging instance first.
What do we need from our own staff for this migration?
You need three kinds of people. A platform or DevOps engineer installs and maintains the containers, database, SMTP settings and backups. An identity or security owner configures OAuth or SSO and decides who gets access to which workspace. A team lead or API owner reviews exported collections, environments and authentication settings, and confirms that nothing sensitive is left behind. Ask Hoppscotch and your own security team which secrets are stored in exports before files leave Insomnia. Plan staff time for each role before you commit to a date.
Where do API collections and credentials stay after the move?
With a self-hosted Hoppscotch instance, collections, workspaces and team data are stored in the PostgreSQL database set through DATABASE_URL, on infrastructure your organization controls. That is different from Insomnia's cloud-linked features such as Cloud Sync, which sit behind a Kong account for most functions. Your own database, backup policy and network controls then govern the data. Confirm with your security team how the database is encrypted, who can reach it, and how backups are protected, because those controls are now your responsibility.
When staying with Insomnia still makes sense
Staying with Insomnia is a reasonable choice when a move would cost more in staff time than it saves in licensing. The clearest case is a small team with no spare server capacity and no one who wants to own a database, mail relay and sign-in configuration. A self-hosted Hoppscotch instance needs a PostgreSQL database set through DATABASE_URL, SMTP settings for email, and at least one OAuth provider or the email sign-in path. If nobody on the team is prepared to install, patch and back up that stack on a regular schedule, the operational burden can outweigh the seat cost. Before deciding, ask who would own the Hoppscotch server after the first install, and whether that person has time each quarter for the Community Edition upgrade cycle.
A second case is a workflow that depends on specific Insomnia features you have not yet confirmed on Hoppscotch. Build a short list from your current daily use: environment and variable handling, authentication flows, pre-request and test scripting, Git-based sync, and any plugins your team relies on. Then test each item against a Hoppscotch instance in a non-production workspace. Use the Hoppscotch importer and the hopp test CLI, which is described as alpha, to run one representative collection end to end. Where a feature does not carry over, decide whether a workaround is acceptable or whether that feature keeps you on Insomnia for now. The same check applies to Bruno if it is on your shortlist, so the comparison stays fair.
The third case is an existing commercial agreement with Kong. If your organization already holds Insomnia Pro or Enterprise seats through a contract that covers the features you use, the remaining cost is usually a renewal decision rather than a switch. Confirm the term, seat count and which features the agreement actually includes, and check whether Kong's own offering meets your data handling rules for the collections in question. Keeping Insomnia for now is a defensible outcome of this comparison, and it is still worth recording the review date so the decision gets revisited before the next renewal.
How DeployOpen works on this
DeployOpen plans, installs, hardens and supports self-hosted Hoppscotch inside your own infrastructure, so shared Insomnia-style workspaces stay on servers you control. We start with a written scope that fits your team, identity setup and data handling, then build, test, document and hand over the instance.
How we scope
- Inventory which Insomnia organizations, projects and environments the team uses today and which must move
- Agree the hosting target, PostgreSQL database and container platform in writing before any work starts
- Define which sign-in methods the team needs, such as Email, GitHub, Google or Microsoft OAuth, plus SMTP
- Record whether Community Edition or Enterprise Edition fits the requirements, including SAML, SCIM and audit logs
How we build
- Install Hoppscotch Community Edition from Docker containers or the Helm chart, matching your Kubernetes setup
- Configure the database connection, sign-in providers and email settings, then test them with pilot users
- Run an import test of Insomnia and Postman exports, checking the 50 MB self-hosted limit and environment values
- Set up hopp test in your CI pipeline with JUnit XML reports, noting that the CLI is still labeled alpha
How we hand over
- Deliver a runbook covering install, upgrade steps, backup and restore procedures for the PostgreSQL database
- Document workspace roles, member onboarding and the process for moving collections between environments
- Walk your platform and security staff through configuration, secrets handling and access review steps
- Provide written evidence of tests run, so your auditors and compliance leads can review the controls
How we support
- Ongoing support, upgrades and continuous testing are available as a retainer, scoped separately from the build
- Plan each quarterly Community Edition release against your change window before applying it
- Confirm with your team who owns the instance, on-call duties and the patching schedule after handover
- Ask us for a quote built from the written scope, which sets out every deliverable and timeline
