Requestly

Requestly is a modern, developer-centric API client engineered for teams who prioritize performance, privacy, and seamless collaboration. It serves as a powerful, lightweight alternative to traditional cloud-based clients like Postman, built on a foundational principle of local-first architecture. This means all your sensitive API collections, environment variables, and request histories are stored directly on your machine as standard files, ensuring your data never leaves your control unless you choose to share it. Designed for the modern development workflow, Requestly integrates natively with Git, allowing teams to version control their API collections, create branches, and review changes through pull requests just as they do with their source code. It is AI-native, embedding intelligent assistance to help developers craft requests, generate tests, and debug APIs with unprecedented speed. Supporting both REST and GraphQL with full schema introspection, and equipped with features like pre/post-request scripts, environment variables, and a collection runner, Requestly provides a comprehensive toolkit for API development and testing. Its generous free tier includes essential team collaboration features such as shared workspaces and role-based access control, making professional-grade API management accessible without a login barrier. Trusted by over 300,000 developers at leading companies including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, Requestly is the definitive choice for teams seeking a fast, secure, and collaborative API workflow.

Git-Native Collections

Requestly revolutionizes API collaboration by storing collections as plain text files (in JSON format) on your local file system. This design allows you to place these files under Git version control. Teams can now branch, merge, commit, and review changes to their API specifications and test suites using the same familiar workflows they apply to their codebase. This eliminates the lock-in and sync issues associated with proprietary cloud storage, providing transparency, history, and robust collaboration directly through your existing DevOps tools.

Local-First & Login-Free Architecture

Prioritizing developer privacy and immediacy, Requestly operates on a local-first principle. No account or login is required to start using the application; you can download it and begin testing APIs within seconds. All your data—collections, environments, variables, and logs—resides securely on your local machine. This approach not only enhances security and performance by eliminating network latency for basic operations but also ensures you have full ownership and portability of your data at all times.

AI-Native API Development

Requestly incorporates artificial intelligence directly into the API workflow to accelerate development. The built-in AI can intelligently assist in composing complex requests, automatically generating test cases based on responses, and helping debug issues by analyzing API behavior. This embedded intelligence reduces manual effort, helps prevent errors, and allows developers, whether novice or expert, to work more efficiently and focus on building rather than on repetitive configuration tasks.

Comprehensive API Protocol Support

The tool offers robust support for both REST and GraphQL APIs, catering to modern backend architectures. For GraphQL, it provides a sophisticated client with schema introspection and auto-completion, making it easy to explore types and build valid queries. For all API types, it includes powerful features like pre-request and post-response scripts for dynamic request manipulation and response processing, environment variables for configuration management across different stages, and a collection runner for automating batch tests and workflows.

Team-Based API Development and Review

Development teams can use Requestly's Git-native feature to collaboratively build and maintain API collections. Backend and frontend developers, or QA engineers, can work within a shared Git repository. Changes to endpoints, parameters, or test scripts can be proposed via branches and merged after review, ensuring consistency and quality in API contracts and integration tests. This use case formalizes API testing as part of the code review process.

Secure and Private API Testing in Regulated Industries

For organizations in finance, healthcare, or enterprise software where data sovereignty and security are paramount, Requestly's local-first architecture is ideal. Sensitive API keys, authentication tokens, and proprietary request/response data never get transmitted to or stored on third-party cloud servers. Developers can conduct thorough testing and debugging entirely offline, complying with strict internal security policies and regulatory requirements without compromising on tool capability.

Seamful Migration from Postman

Teams feeling constrained by Postman's licensing, cloud dependency, or collaboration costs can use Requestly for a frictionless transition. The one-click import feature seamlessly brings over collections, environments, and scripts. Teams can then immediately benefit from local storage, Git integration, and free collaboration features without losing their historical work, making the switch a practical and low-risk decision to regain control and reduce tooling expenses.

Automated API Testing and CI/CD Integration

Developers and DevOps engineers can integrate Requestly collections into Continuous Integration and Deployment pipelines. Since collections are stored as files in a Git repo, they can be checked out during build processes. The Requestly CLI or collection runner can be invoked to execute a suite of API tests against development, staging, or production environments, providing automated validation of API health and contract adherence with every code change.

How does Requestly's collaboration work if data is stored locally?

Requestly enables collaboration through shared Git repositories. Team members clone a repository containing the Requestly collection files. When someone makes changes, they commit and push to a branch, creating a pull request for team review. Once approved and merged, others can pull the updates to their local machines. The application itself also offers shared workspace synchronization via secure peer-to-peer or cloud-optional sync for real-time collaboration, while keeping the source of truth in version-controlled files.

Is Requestly really free for team collaboration?

Yes, a core differentiator of Requestly is that its free tier includes robust team collaboration features. This includes the ability to create shared workspaces, invite team members, and utilize role-based access control (RBAC) to assign Admin, Editor, or Viewer permissions. This stands in contrast to many competitors who restrict advanced collaboration to paid enterprise plans, making Requestly an exceptionally cost-effective solution for startups and development teams.

Can I import my existing Postman data into Requestly?

Absolutely. Requestly provides a straightforward, one-click import process specifically designed for Postman users. You can easily import your complete Postman collections, including all requests, folders, associated environment variables, and pre-request/test scripts. This ensures a smooth and immediate transition, allowing you to leverage Requestly's enhanced features without having to manually recreate your existing API testing infrastructure.

What makes Requestly a "lightweight" alternative to Postman?

Requestly is considered lightweight due to its focused architecture. It avoids the feature bloat and mandatory cloud synchronization that can slow down other clients. By operating locally-first, it launches quickly and performs operations without network delays for data access. Its interface is designed for efficiency, and it does not require a persistent user login or account dashboard for core functionality, resulting in a faster, more responsive developer experience dedicated specifically to API workflows.