Postman / Kong

Postman & Insomnia

Postman killed its offline Scratch Pad in 2023 and forced a cloud account just to send a request.

  • Account wallSign up, log in, hand over your data, just to use it.
  • BetrayalChanged the deal after you committed: relicensed, shut down or bricked.

The exits

  1. An offline-first API client. Collections are plain files in your git repo.

    Status
    Stable Mature and ready for daily work.
    License
    MIT
    Get Bruno ↗View source ↗

  2. A fast, lightweight API development ecosystem in the browser.

    Status
    Stable Mature and ready for daily work.
    License
    MIT
    Get Hoppscotch ↗View source ↗

Suggest an edit to this entry ↗

Microsoft
  • Lock-in
  • Surveillance

GitHub

Your code on Microsoft's platform, used to train Copilot.

  1. ForgejoStableGPL-3.0

    A community-governed, self-hosted forge. It powers Codeberg.

    Site ↗Source ↗
  2. GiteaStableMIT

    Painless self-hosted Git in a single binary.

    Site ↗Source ↗
Salesforce
  • Betrayal
  • Paywall

Heroku

Killed its free tier in 2022, wiping out a generation of hobby projects.

  1. CoolifyStableApache-2.0

    A self-hosted Heroku and Netlify alternative. Push to deploy on your own servers.

    Site ↗Source ↗
Redis Ltd.
  • Betrayal

Redis

Dropped its open-source license in 2024. It added AGPL back in 2025, but the trust was already spent.

  1. ValkeyStableBSD-3-Clause

    The Linux Foundation fork of Redis, a permissively licensed drop-in replacement.

    Site ↗Source ↗
HashiCorp (IBM)
  • Betrayal

Terraform

Relicensed from open source to the Business Source License in 2023, against the community that built it.

  1. OpenTofuStableMPL-2.0

    The open-source Terraform fork, stewarded by the Linux Foundation and a drop-in replacement.

    Site ↗Source ↗