Bowire vs. Insomnia
Insomnia is a polished desktop client from Kong. Bowire discovers your services instead of keeping a hand-maintained collection, speaks more protocols, and needs no account.
When Insomnia is the better fit
Pick Insomnia when you want a solid local-first desktop client for REST / GraphQL / gRPC / WebSocket, and you’re fine with Kong’s account layer for Sync, Teams, and the Dev Portal.
When Bowire is the better fit
Pick Bowire when you also need SignalR, MCP, MQTT, Socket.IO, OData, or custom protocols, or when you want the workbench embedded in your ASP.NET service instead of running a separate desktop app. No Kong account required for anything.
Where they differ
Only the rows where Insomnia and Bowire differ, from the full comparison. Rows we could not verify for Insomnia are left out rather than guessed. Facts as of 2026-08; correct one.
| Feature | Insomnia | Bowire |
|---|---|---|
| Multi-protocol supportInsomnia: REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, SSE | 5 | 20+ |
| SOAPBowire: WSDL 1.1 discovery, 1.1 + 1.2 envelopes | ✗ | ✓ |
| SignalR | ✗ | ✓ |
| MCPInsomnia: MCP client only — Insomnia can call other people's MCP servers, but doesn't expose its own collections as MCP tools | client only | ✓ |
| JSON-RPCBowire: OpenRPC rpc.discover | ✗ | ✓ |
| MQTT | ✗ | ✓ |
| AMQPBowire: 0.9.1 RabbitMQ + 1.0 | ✗ | ✓ |
| NATSBowire: core + JetStream + Services API | ✗ | ✓ |
| Socket.IO | ✗ | ✓ |
| OData | ✗ | ✓ |
| AsyncAPIBowire: discovery source — routes to MQTT / Kafka / WS wires | ✗ | ✓ |
| Surgewave | ✗ | ✓ |
| Kafka | ✗ | ✓ |
| Apache Pulsar | ✗ | ✓ |
| DIS (IEEE 1278) | ✗ | ✓ |
| UDP (raw datagrams) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Akka.NET (mailbox tap) | ✗ | ✓ |
| TacticalAPI (situational awareness)Bowire: v1.0.0 stable — descriptor discovery, typed CRUD, server-streaming track pump, the lot | ✗ | ✓ |
| OTLP (OpenTelemetry listener)Bowire: Passive listener — receive traces / metrics / logs from the services under test; first-party opt-in package | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom protocol plugins | ✗ | ✓ |
| Auto-discoveryInsomnia: Manual endpoint configuration required | manual | ✓ |
| Service catalogue (Consul / Kubernetes) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Schema drift watch | ✗ | ✓ |
| Embedded in ASP.NET app | ✗ | ✓ |
| On-premise deploymentInsomnia: Enterprise plan (paid) | Enterprise (paid) | ✓ |
| Kubernetes / Helm | ✓ | planned |
| Air-gapped installInsomnia: Enterprise plan (paid) | Enterprise (paid) | ✓ |
| SSO / SCIMInsomnia: Enterprise plan (paid) | Enterprise (paid) | ✓ |
| Native .NET | ✗ | ✓ |
| Record + replayInsomnia: Partial recording support | partial | ✓ |
| Convert to test assertionsInsomnia: Only via the Inso CLI, not in the GUI | via Inso CLI | ✓ |
| Correlated multi-protocol timeline | ✗ | ✓ |
| Native export format | Insomnia JSON | .bwr |
| Replay as mock serverInsomnia: 1,000 mock requests/month in the Essentials (free) tier; 10,000 in Pro; unlimited in Enterprise | Free tier (1k req/mo) | ✓ |
| Mock from schema (no recording)Bowire: bowire mock --schema (OpenAPI 3 doc), --grpc-schema (FileDescriptorSet), or --graphql-schema (SDL) → running mock, no traffic capture needed | ✗ | ✓ |
| Mock engine depthInsomnia: Static example responses | basic | ✓ |
| Multiple duplex channelsInsomnia: One channel at a time (serial, not parallel) | one at a time | ✓ |
| Visual flow editor | ✗ | ✓ |
| Branching (if / else) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Loops | ✗ | ✓ |
| Delays / wait steps | ✗ | ✓ |
| Variable forwarding | ✗ | ✓ |
| Per-step assertions | ✗ | ✓ |
| Performance / load testing | ✗ | ✓ |
| CI test runner (JUnit / SARIF / HTML)Insomnia: Inso CLIBowire: bowire test — runs recordings or flows headless with JUnit, SARIF and HTML reports, GitHub annotations, --fail-on gates | Inso CLI | ✓ |
| Contract testing (consumer / provider) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Snapshot testingBowire: exact | structural modes, __snapshots__ baselines committed to git, --update-snapshots re-baselining | ✗ | ✓ |
| Data-driven test runsInsomnia: Via the Inso CLIBowire: Per-step datasets — inline rows, CSV, or generator | Inso CLI | ✓ |
| Endpoint test coverageBowire: Per-method run history + coverage chips in the Discover sidebar — see which endpoints regression runs actually touch | ✗ | ✓ |
| Security scanning | ✗ | ✓ OWASP API Top 10 |
| Out-of-band (OAST) detection | ✗ | ✓ |
| API monitoring / scheduled probes | ✗ | ✓ local |
| Traffic interception / reverse proxyBowire: In-process app.UseBowireInterceptor() middleware plus a YARP-based standalone reverse proxy; Intercept rail with Captured | Live overrides | Mock servers | ✗ | ✓ |
| AI assistant (local-first, BYOK) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Git-native workspaceInsomnia: Git Sync available, but requires Kong cloud | Git Sync (cloud) | ✓ |
| Public API catalogInsomnia: Kong Dev Portal (Enterprise)Bowire: Internal catalogue built in (browsable in the workbench + bowire catalogue list|providers|use|clear); public hosted docs via the Surgewave Registry | partial | internal ✓ / public via Registry |
| Hosted docs pageInsomnia: Via Kong Developer Portal | Kong portal | ✗ |
| Try-It-Out widget | ✗ | via client |
| API versioning | ✗ | via Surgewave Registry |
| Catalog / searchBowire: Built-in catalogue — local file / HTTP / Consul / Kubernetes / Agent providers (bowire catalogue); public sharing via the Surgewave Registry | ✗ | ✓ built-in |
| MCP adapterInsomnia: MCP client only, not server | client only | ✓ every protocol |
| Tools capability | ✗ | ✓ |
| Resources capabilityBowire: 8 resources: bowire://environments, bowire://recordings (+/{id}), bowire://collections (+/{id}), bowire://flows (+/{id}), bowire://plugins | ✗ | ✓ |
| Prompts capabilityBowire: 4 prompts: replay-recording, compare-responses, fuzz-method, scan-service | ✗ | ✓ |
| stdio transportInsomnia: MCP client only, not server | client only | ✓ |
| Streamable HTTP transport | ✗ | ✓ |
| Platform ops as MCP tools | ✗ | ✓ 15 tools |
| Recording start / stopBowire: bowire.record.start / .stop / .list | ✗ | ✓ |
| Environment listBowire: bowire.env.list — read-only enumeration; an environment-switch tool is tracked in the v2.9 MCP-completion milestone | ✗ | ✓ |
| Replay executeBowire: bowire.record.replay | ✗ | ✓ |
| Mock spin-upBowire: bowire.mock.start / .stop / .list | ✗ | ✓ |
| License | Apache 2.0 (core only!) | Apache 2.0 |
| Price | Freemium | Free |
● supported · ◐ partial or paid tier · ○ not supported
Moving over from Insomnia
Bowire has no Insomnia importer yet — that is #674. What works today:
- Point Bowire at the service. For OpenAPI, gRPC (reflection) and GraphQL services, discovery lists every method without any import.
- OpenAPI. Export the spec with Insomnia's Inso CLI and drop the file on Bowire's Schema Files tab.
- HAR. Insomnia exports HAR;
bowire import har export.harturns it into a.bwrrecording you can replay, mock or turn into tests (--redact-secretsstrips credential headers). See file formats.