Milkman – The Better Alternative to Postman (milkman.dev)
52 pointsby jplunien4 hours ago60 comments
urig 3 hours ago
For a Postman-like experience, I prefer Bruno: https://github.com/usebruno/bruno (not affiliated)
CatMustard 3 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
The Hurl file format seems good, any new FOSS replacements should probably build on top
satvikpendem 36 minutes ago
Bruno is VC funded.
uncletoxa 38 minutes ago
Also yaak
https://yaak.app/
satvikpendem 37 minutes ago
Bruno is also VC funded so it'll go the same way.
zabij 3 hours ago
- I got sick of all those electron-based applications
- I created a JavaFx-based workbench
Oh boi
asdfsa32 3 hours ago
Modern JavaFX isn't your grandparents JavaFX, in fact, modern Java isn't your grandpa's Java.
thunfischtoast 3 hours ago
So I'm my own grandpa? Whats sorcery is this?
asdfsa32 an hour ago
Yes, you're a dinosaur now, I am afraid. Kids born in 2000 are 26 year old.
biinjo 2 hours ago
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 an hour ago
What a wonderful usage of resources.
mexicocitinluez 41 minutes ago
It's wild that building bespoke software that fits your needs instead of relying on a one-size-fits-all approach that you're constantly battling against is frowned upon.
I have to ask myself what business you could possibly be in where you look at the software landscape and think "Yea, this aligns perfectly with my needs".
mrdootdoot 24 minutes ago
Maybe this is what and how it always should have been. My life is better now that an LLM proxies my human sound waves and finger clacks to bits that do what I say - and precisely what I say nothing else
nilamo an hour ago
Magnificent. One step closer to self sufficient community ships drifting through the system, meeting up with other ships once a month or less.
WallWextra 15 minutes ago
These kinds of things are prime candidate for vibe coding; I don't understand why I would use someone else's. I have a native swift postman ripoff which hardcodes exactly the APIs I'm interested in, and is full of convenience features that make sense to nobody but me.
Sad for all the better postman alternatives, but very happy that postman is in trouble.
gosen 3 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
It looks like a windows app running on macOS.
dkdbejwi383 2 hours ago
Both the application UI and website are giving open source option from 2008
bluerooibos 16 minutes ago
Oof, outdated UI (website and platform).
No excuse for this in 2026 tbh - get Claude to implement a dark and light mode in tailwind and pick a colour theme. It doesn't mean the product is trash but it's a poor first impression.
upmostly 3 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
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 2 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
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 2 hours ago
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...
Muromec 2 hours ago
You will own nothing and be happy they said
ethbr1 an hour ago
> 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 2 hours ago
> 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 2 hours ago
Export to curl?
Mashimo an hour ago
They are testers, not devs. They don't know how to use command line, or edit environment variables.
mrdootdoot 28 minutes ago
Have you considered converting this to an actual test suite in $language with AI doing the majority of the work?
Mashimo 5 minutes ago
No, not really. It's already unit and end-to-end tested.
But sometimes the tester needs to make a test where they create something via the official API to use it in other parts of the app. They just open Postman (soon to be replaced), select the collection, select the server, select POST-item and of the the races. Not everything needs to be AI.
We could vibe code something specific for our needs, but that would be more or less again just end up something like postman again? At least I currently don't have the vision to see a big change.
hn_submit 30 minutes ago
How about writing it in C++ or Rust and doing away completely with huge memory footprint and long startup times. Java also needs a runtime, which is bothersome.
I suggest using wxWidgets or Qt so you get multi-platform support for free.
sumedh 3 hours ago
Looking at such ugly UI breaks my heart :(
mrdootdoot 29 minutes ago
Isn’t testing an API just more test cases that Claude toils through? Why do I care about milkman Bruno or postman.
jplunien 4 hours ago
Jackson98Tom 3 hours ago
Have you ever heard about Bruno?
x3ro 3 hours ago
Came here to say this. While not perfect, Bruno is certainly the best tool in this category that I have used :)
splittydev an hour ago
When I saw the UI, my first thought was "is that written in Java"? And indeed, it is. Kinda funny that it's so easy to spot that language based on its horrible default UI skins alone.
Offirmo 3 hours ago
What is better than the existing, established alternatives https://www.usebruno.com/ and https://insomnia.rest/ ?
orng 3 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
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 3 hours ago
I think Insomnia and Bruno are both non-native JS apps, I think the moat here is that "this" is not "that".
asdfsa32 3 hours ago
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.
hector84 3 hours ago
if you use VS Code, there are a lot of alternatives:
[0]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=humao.re... - rest client storing config locally
[1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Christia...
[2]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=prawel.r... - same as [0], but with GUI
[3]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=slverma....
etc.
prmoustache 3 hours ago
what is wrong with curl and httpie (I mean the open source cli one, no idea what the desktop one does)?
hoherd 2 hours ago
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 2 hours ago
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.
ivanjermakov an hour ago
> 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.
hobo123 2 hours ago
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.
shaaaade 2 hours ago
I wish the milkman would deliver my milk... In the morning...
fbnlsr 2 hours ago
You have so many machines Richard
herpderperator 3 hours ago
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.
manveerc 3 hours ago
What’s next garbageman?
Jokes aside, why is it better?
aorth 3 hours ago
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.
robofanatic 3 hours ago
Spiderman?
ehosca an hour ago
when will it run on AmigaOS?
7734128 3 hours ago
Your GUI screenshots are squished on mobile. Stretched vertically.
dankobgd an hour ago
i hate this more than electron
elAhmo an hour ago
Yet another Postman alternative...