The short answer
- Testing a web app and want problems found for you: RequestFox.
- A raw look at everything one page load does, nothing to install: the DevTools Network panel.
- Designing, documenting and sharing APIs across a team: Postman or Insomnia.
- API requests kept as plain files in Git, next to the code: Bruno.
- An open-source client on the web you can self-host: Hoppscotch.
- Rules that redirect, rewrite or inject on every page, all the time: Requestly.
Each comparison
- RequestFox vs Postman
Browser capture and flags, or team workspaces and more protocols.
- RequestFox vs DevTools Network
The judging and the history, or the raw live view.
- RequestFox vs Insomnia
In the browser, or an open-source desktop client with plugins.
- RequestFox vs Bruno
Capture what the app sent, or write requests as files in Git.
- RequestFox vs Hoppscotch
Your app's real calls, or a self-hostable client with realtime protocols.
Where RequestFox falls short
Honest limits of RequestFox 2.4.0, so you are not surprised:
- It sees what a browser tab sends. Mobile and desktop apps need a proxy-based tool.
- While recording, Compose sends from the page you are testing, with its cookies; with nothing recording it sends from the extension itself, without any page's cookies, after the browser asks once for that site.
- No team workspace or cloud sync, by design. Share work as files: collections, sessions, HAR and reports.
- An EventSource stream's live rows are the event types the page listens for: the browser hands a page no others.
- Pre-request and post-response scripts, and rewriting a request or reply with a script, run in Chrome only: Firefox does not let extensions run code typed at runtime. Chaining values between requests works in both.
- No native gRPC or MQTT client (gRPC-Web and Connect only).
- It is free. Its code is MIT-licensed and ships readable inside the extension; the source repository is not public.