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Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman

47 points jplunien 3 hours ago 48 comments

Offirmo 2 hours ago | parent

What is better than the existing, established alternatives https://www.usebruno.com/ and https://insomnia.rest/ ?

orng 2 hours ago | parent

Not that I necessarily recommend yaak but this post explains why Bruno and Insomnia are not to be trusted: https://royathan.com/blog/the-api-client-hunt/

EspadaV9 2 hours ago | parent

I switched to Yaak, initially compiled it myself but now paying for it. I've not had any issues with it, does what I need and keeps out of the way. Simple yaml files in Git is also nice. I would recommend giving it a spin. I think there is a trial, and you can build it yourself, with a bit of configuring.

pelagicAustral 2 hours ago | parent

I think Insomnia and Bruno are both non-native JS apps, I think the moat here is that "this" is not "that".

asdfsa32 2 hours ago | parent

Insomnia has been around for a while but just like this post from a new account, there is a lot of push for bruno, which is usually a redflag. Never trust things that are "preached" for free.

prmoustache 1 hour ago | parent

what is wrong with curl and httpie (I mean the open source cli one, no idea what the desktop one does)?

hoherd 37 minutes ago | parent

I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but every time somebody mentions Postman or Bruno, I think of https://justuse.org/curl because so much of is is true.

kind_of_serious 1 hour ago | parent

I would stay off Insomnia. A few versions ago, they practically took my local configuration ransom so they could force me to create a cloud account. Bruno is (still) not there, but the maintainers are slowly heading that way.

manveerc 2 hours ago | parent

What’s next garbageman?

Jokes aside, why is it better?

aorth 2 hours ago | parent

I think that it was posted in regards to the recent news, see: Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50354960

robofanatic 1 hour ago | parent

Spiderman?

gosen 2 hours ago | parent

The UI looks a bit outdated, it gives me vibes of some old software from 2000s somehow (probably because of the Java). And it would be really helpful to clearly state benefits of using Milkman instead of Postman right on the home page (e.g. performance benchmarks, UX, extendability, etc.). I see that it has some users and 1.3k stars so there're definitely some cool things in Milkman, probably you could just present them better

kjmr 1 hour ago | parent

It looks like a windows app running on macOS.

dkdbejwi383 1 hour ago | parent

Both the application UI and website are giving open source option from 2008

zabij 2 hours ago | parent

- I got sick of all those electron-based applications - I created a JavaFx-based workbench

Oh boi

asdfsa32 2 hours ago | parent

Modern JavaFX isn't your grandparents JavaFX, in fact, modern Java isn't your grandpa's Java.

thunfischtoast 1 hour ago | parent

So I'm my own grandpa? Whats sorcery is this?

herpderperator 2 hours ago | parent

The author appears to be suggesting that a key difference between Bruno and Insomnia is that Milkman not written in JavaScript/Electron, but rather JavaFx (i.e., Java) and thus is faster.

7734128 2 hours ago | parent

Your GUI screenshots are squished on mobile. Stretched vertically.

Jackson98Tom 1 hour ago | parent

Have you ever heard about Bruno?

x3ro 1 hour ago | parent

Came here to say this. While not perfect, Bruno is certainly the best tool in this category that I have used :)

upmostly 1 hour ago | parent

Are API testing UIs really relevant anymore? I haven't manually tested an API for almost two years, and my APIs are SO much better. This kind of GUI is going to die over the next 5 years.

Postman should be seriously worried.

rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 1 hour ago | parent

I'm thinking the same thing, I haven't have a need for a tool like Postman in a long time, prompting is enough at this point. I wonder what features others use from Postman that an agent can't do quickly.

ihavesomeexampl 1 hour ago | parent

Quickly eye-balling onprem responses, skipping over UIs and just eyeballing data in general is really useful. Curl can do it but with a couple headers it becomes messy, also RPCs, websockets, etc. It’s just convenient to have a single place where you can eyeball all comms.

vr46 1 hour ago | parent

You're not wrong - I bought a Bruno "Golden Edition" for $9 two years ago pre-release... and... I just don't use it. I'm not even sure why I keep it around, at 524.5 MB

...and... it's gone

upmostly 1 hour ago | parent

That's an interesting point. I wonder if over the next X years consumers will free up ALOT of disk space by just using agents and not needing to download and install desktop software.

Full disclosure, I'm building a desktop app called DB Pro [1] which is a modern desktop database client.

We're still doing well, and selling a lot, but we're having to think about what the next 2/3/4/5 years look like...

[1] https://dbpro.app

Muromec 47 minutes ago | parent

You will own nothing and be happy they said

ethbr1 29 minutes ago | parent

> if over the next X years consumers will free up ALOT of disk space by just using agents and not needing to download and install desktop software

Trading bits you own for rented redundant compute to recreate same seems... suboptimal?

How much power should we burn on everyone's agent recreating curl?*

* yes, agents have tools, but what is and isn't an agent tool is a gray area. "Desktop software" could be an agent tool with a human UI.

Mashimo 1 hour ago | parent

> Are API testing UIs really relevant anymore?

We have a postman collection mainly for testers to manually verify certain aspect of a otherwise fairly unit and end-to-end test covered API.

mkesper 50 minutes ago | parent

Export to curl?

Mashimo 22 minutes ago | parent

They are testers, not devs. They don't know how to use command line, or edit environment variables.

urig 1 hour ago | parent

For a Postman-like experience, I prefer Bruno: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno (not affiliated)

CatMustard 1 hour ago | parent

Never used milkman so can't say if it's better, but +1 for Bruno.

1. Very similar UX to postman (just minus the bullshit), so a very easy transition.

2. It's FOSS*

3. Most importantly of all, it has a cute dog logo.

* oof, just saw this on another comment: https://royathan.com/blog/the-api-client-hunt/

Kinrany 1 hour ago | parent

The Hurl file format seems good, any new FOSS replacements should probably build on top

sumedh 1 hour ago | parent

Looking at such ugly UI breaks my heart :(

shaaaade 52 minutes ago | parent

I wish the milkman would deliver my milk... In the morning...

fbnlsr 51 minutes ago | parent

You have so many machines Richard

hobo123 35 minutes ago | parent

By the time I decided I should maybe try postman, I was absolutely turned off that it wants you to setup an account (for what?).

Went with Insomnia instead (which IIRC also wants an account now?) and now just some text-mode VSCode http client.

biinjo 34 minutes ago | parent

We are in an age where it’s easier to vibe code your own alternative than to do a quick internet search to check if an alternative already exists.

bleuarff 25 minutes ago | parent

What a wonderful usage of resources.

nilamo 14 minutes ago | parent

Magnificent. One step closer to self sufficient community ships drifting through the system, meeting up with other ships once a month or less.

elAhmo 30 minutes ago | parent

Yet another Postman alternative...

dankobgd 29 minutes ago | parent

i hate this more than electron

ivanjermakov 21 minutes ago | parent

> New features regularly. There are more and more plugins/features coming.

Why all software needs to constantly evolve and grow with features? This is how you end up with what Postman has become.