What makes Kreya a good Postman alternative

Postman was one of the first REST GUI clients to emerge. It probably is the most popular tool in this space. Here is why Kreya is a good Postman alternative and why you should consider switching from Postman to Kreya.

Kreya vs Postman comparison: What are the differences?​

Overview​

* Technically its possible to use Postman without an account, but for the most very basic features (e.g. add requests to a collection) an account is needed.

Feature bloat​

Postman supports a lot of features. Really, lots of features. In fact, probably the main criticism of Postman is that it is very bloated, slow and "enterprisey". Kreya tries to maintain its simplicity by limiting its feature set and only releasing fully thought-out features.

Required accounts and dark patterns​

An account is required to use the web version of Postman. Also, while registering an account is optional for using the desktop version, Postman urges users to sign up for a new account by hiding the skip option. In contrast, Kreya tries to collect as little information as possible about its users. An account is only required when using a paid plan to verify the license. Kreya is also completely transparent about the information it collects, for example the anonymous telemetry data (which users are able to opt out of).

Authentication​

Kreya supports several authentication mechanisms such as OAuth2 or Windows authentication. Reusing the same authentication configuration with Kreya is easy, there is no need to duplicate authentication information for different requests. Comparing this with Postman, it is much more of a hassle to reuse the same authentication configuration for multiple requests.

Directory settings​

A feature that makes Kreya a joy to use are the directory settings. It allows users to specify default settings for multiple operations in a folder or the whole project. For example, if all operations in a project use the same host or the same authentication configuration, it only needs to be specified once. This even supports templating and environment specific values, so switching between environments works flawlessly after the initial configuration. Postman does not have a comparable feature.

Support for HTTP/2​

Even though support for HTTP/2 in Postman has been requested for several years, it still hasn't been implemented. In comparison, Kreya supports HTTP/2 and even HTTP/3!

Server-sent events / streamed responses​

Kreya supports server-sent events and streamed responses such as application/stream+json. Each response is displayed as soon as it arrives. Support for server-sent events and streamed responses is not available in Postman.

Data storage and sharing​

Postman stores the data in a single database file in the appdata directory. Sharing Postman projects continuously with other users requires a paid plan. Storing a Postman project in a VCS (eg. alongside the actual API code) is not easy and exporting gRPC requests is not supported. In contrast, Kreya explicitly stores the data in a format that is easy to sync with for example git. Case in point is that Kreya does not store stringified JSON (which could cause a lot of merge conflicts) and allows users to choose where the data is stored. Users can also choose the software responsible for syncing themselves and are not locked into using Kreya.

Pricing​

Both Kreya and Postman have free and paid plans. Comparing the prices, Postman is much more expensive, but also provides many more features than Kreya.