Hoppscotch: Free Open Source API Platform for Developers

When working with APIs, developers often rely on tools like Postman or Insomnia to test requests and organize their workflows. But what if you need a lightweight, open-source, and community-driven alternative?

Discover Hoppscotch — a free, modern, and powerful API platform designed to help developers test, share, and collaborate on API requests with ease.

Hoppscotch is not just a request testing tool. It’s a complete open-source API ecosystem offering workspaces, collaboration features, history tracking, environment variables, and even support for REST, GraphQL, and WebSockets. Let’s dive into its key features.

OAuth & SMTP Authentication

Hoppscotch provides authentication options out of the box, making it easier to secure your platform when deployed in a team environment. You can configure:

• OAuth for secure single sign-on and integration with identity providers.
• SMTP for email-based authentication and notifications.

This flexibility allows organizations to adopt Hoppscotch as part of their internal toolchain without worrying about access control.

Administration Dashboard

The Admin Dashboard in Hoppscotch gives you a centralized view of platform activity and user management. Administrators can:

• Monitor workspaces and collections.
• Manage user permissions.
• Oversee authentication settings.

It’s built for scalability, whether you’re running Hoppscotch for a small dev team or at an organizational level.

Workspaces & Users

Collaboration is at the heart of Hoppscotch. With workspaces, you can:

• Group related collections and requests.
• Invite team members to collaborate.
• Assign roles to control who can view or edit resources.

This makes it ideal for distributed teams working on shared APIs.

Collections & Requests

Similar to Postman, Hoppscotch lets you organize API calls into collections. Each request can be stored, tested, and reused. Features include:

• Saving and categorizing requests for projects.
• Supporting multiple HTTP methods and configurations.
• Easy execution of requests for quick testing.

Developers can save time by building a structured library of API calls.

Import

Migrating to Hoppscotch is seamless. You can import collections from other API platforms like Postman. This makes adoption frictionless — you don’t need to start from scratch.

Environments

Hoppscotch supports environment variables, allowing you to configure base URLs, tokens, and other dynamic values. For example:

• Switching between development, staging, and production endpoints.
• Managing sensitive tokens without hardcoding them into requests.

This makes your workflows both flexible and secure.

History

The History feature automatically tracks past requests. You can revisit, re-run, or save them into a collection for later use. This is particularly handy during debugging or exploratory testing.

Share

With Hoppscotch, sharing is effortless. You can:

• Share collections with teammates.
• Export and import requests as JSON.
• Generate links for collaboration.

This makes collaboration smooth and transparent, reducing friction when working across teams.

Rest, GraphQL, Realtime (WebSockets)

Hoppscotch is not limited to REST APIs. It also supports:

• GraphQL queries and mutations.
• Realtime APIs with WebSockets.

This multi-protocol support makes it a versatile tool for modern API development, covering backend, frontend, and realtime integrations.

Desktop Clients

While Hoppscotch started as a web-first application, it also offers desktop clients for Windows, macOS, and Linux. These bring the same streamlined experience into a native app, perfect for developers who prefer working offline or outside the browser.

Conclusion

Hoppscotch is more than just a Postman alternative. It’s a lightweight, open-source API platform that provides everything from authentication and administration to multi-protocol support and collaboration features.

For developers who value speed, simplicity, and openness, Hoppscotch is a tool worth adopting — whether you’re testing a simple REST endpoint, running a GraphQL query, or managing realtime WebSocket connections.

If you’re looking for a free, open-source solution to manage your API workflows, give Hoppscotch a try and see how it fits into your development toolkit.