Posting is an open-source HTTP client that lives entirely inside your terminal — a keyboard-driven Postman alternative built in Python on top of the Textual TUI framework. We rate it 86/100 — the most polished terminal API client of 2026, and the obvious pick for SSH-heavy backend developers who never want to leave their tmux session.

What is Posting?

Posting is a Terminal User Interface (TUI) HTTP client created by Darren Burns, a former Textualize engineer who shipped Posting v1.0 on July 9, 2024. The project crossed 11,700 GitHub stars by April 2026 and currently sits at version 2.10.0 (released March 25, 2026) under an Apache 2.0 license.

The pitch is simple: tools like Postman and Insomnia have ballooned into 500MB Electron apps with cloud accounts, telemetry, and login walls. Posting throws all of that out. Your requests live as plain YAML files in a directory you control, you navigate them with Vim keys, and the entire app runs over SSH on a Raspberry Pi if you want it to. It is genuinely the only modern HTTP client that treats keyboard ergonomics and version control as first-class features.

Posting jump mode — pressing Ctrl+O highlights interactive widgets with one-key shortcuts — Posting: "jump mode" overlays one-key shortcuts on every interactive widget so you can leap across the UI without arrow keys.

Key Features of Posting

YAML-based collections: Every request is a small, human-readable .posting.yaml file. Drop the directory in a Git repo and you get diffable history, code review, and branch-per-feature for your API testing — something Postman's binary collection format actively fights.
Jump mode navigation: Press Ctrl+O and a single-letter overlay appears on every focusable widget. Two keystrokes get you anywhere on screen — no mouse, no Tab-mashing.
Python pre/post-request scripts: Attach plain Python functions to a request via the scripts: block in YAML. Mutate headers, sign payloads, hydrate variables from a vault, or assert on the response. Output appears in a dedicated "Scripts" tab. Added in Posting 2.0 on October 19, 2024.
Environments and variable interpolation: Switch between dev, staging, and prod with one keystroke. Variables can come from YAML, a .env file, or your shell environment, and hot-reload while Posting is open.
Tree-sitter syntax highlighting: JSON, GraphQL, HTML, XML, and JavaScript bodies are highlighted by the same parser stack that powers Neovim and Helix.
cURL, Postman, and OpenAPI import: Paste a curl command directly into the URL bar and Posting parses headers, body, and method. Import existing Postman v2.1 collections or any OpenAPI 3.0 spec.
SSH-friendly: Because it is a TUI, you can ssh prod-bastion, run posting, and hit internal endpoints from inside the network without VPN gymnastics.
Customizable themes and keymaps: Author your own theme in YAML, or pick from the 20+ bundled themes. Global keybindings are remappable via the keymap config block.

Posting Scripts tab showing the output of a Python pre-request hook — The Scripts tab introduced in Posting 2.0 captures stdout from any Python function attached to a request.

What Users Say About Posting

The Show HN launch in July 2024 reached the front page with overwhelmingly positive comments — developers praised the keyboard-first design, the YAML-on-disk format, and the absence of a mandatory cloud account. The single most repeated complaint on Hacker News and Reddit's r/commandline is the install path: there is no official Homebrew tap and no NixOS package, so first-time users have to install uv or pipx first, which trips up people who expected brew install posting to just work.

On Reddit's r/webdev and r/Python, regular praise focuses on how fast it feels (sub-100ms cold start on a modern laptop) and how well it pairs with tmux. The most common feature request is built-in WebSocket and gRPC support — Posting is HTTP-only as of 2.10.0, and developers who need to test streaming endpoints still fall back to Insomnia or grpcurl.

Posting Pricing

Posting is free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. There is no paid tier, no cloud sync subscription, and no telemetry. The entire product is the binary you install with uv or pipx.

Plan	Price	Key Limits
Open Source	$0	Unlimited requests, environments, scripts, and themes. Self-host anywhere — laptop, server, Docker, Raspberry Pi.

Install on macOS, Linux, or Windows with uv tool install --python 3.13 posting or pipx install posting.

Posting URL autocomplete suggesting variables and previously-used URLs — URL autocomplete pulls from environment variables, variables defined in `.env` files, and previously-typed URLs.

Who Should Use Posting?

Best for: Backend engineers, DevOps practitioners, and SREs who already live in tmux or Neovim; teams that want their API request collections to live alongside source code in Git rather than in a vendor's cloud; anyone who needs to debug an API on a remote server over SSH without forwarding ports back to a local Postman.

Not ideal for: QA testers and product managers who prefer GUI workflows; teams that need real-time collaborative request editing the way Postman Workspaces offers; developers who depend heavily on WebSocket, gRPC, or SSE testing — those protocols are not yet supported.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

Plain-text YAML requests are diffable, mergeable, and reviewable in any Git workflow — a structural advantage Postman cannot match.
Truly fast: cold start under 100ms; no Electron, no Chromium, no login screen.
Works over SSH out of the box, which makes incident response on a locked-down bastion host dramatically easier.
Apache 2.0 license — fork it, ship it inside an enterprise, no strings attached.
Python pre/post-request scripts are far more debuggable than Postman's sandboxed JavaScript runtime.

Cons:

No native Homebrew or NixOS package as of April 2026 — first-run friction is real.
HTTP only. No WebSocket, gRPC, or Server-Sent Events support yet.
No team collaboration features — you have to lean on Git for sharing requests.
Mouse support is limited; users who do not know Vim keys will struggle on day one.
Mostly a one-maintainer project, which means feature velocity depends on Darren Burns's bandwidth.

Alternatives to Posting

Bruno is the closest philosophical cousin — also Git-friendly, also offline-first, but ships a GUI rather than a TUI. Hoppscotch is the strongest open-source web alternative if you prefer a browser tab over a terminal. Postman remains the default choice for teams that need GUI-first collaboration and have no problem with cloud sync. curlie and HTTPie are simpler one-shot CLIs without persistent collections.

Verdict: Is Posting Worth It?

Posting is the rare TUI tool that earns its place on a working developer's laptop in 2026. If you spend most of your day in a terminal, Posting will save you hours of context-switching every week and, more importantly, get your API testing into Git where it belongs. It is not a replacement for Postman in a 50-person QA org, and it does not yet cover WebSockets — but for the keyboard-first developer demographic it targets, nothing else this year comes close. 86/100: outstanding for its niche, with the missing protocols and packaging gaps as the only meaningful holdouts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Posting free?: Yes. Posting is fully free and open source under the Apache 2.0 license. There is no paid tier, no cloud sync subscription, and no required account.
What platforms does Posting support?: Posting runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Because it is a TUI built with Textual, it also runs cleanly inside Docker containers, on Raspberry Pi, and over SSH sessions.
How does Posting compare to Postman?: Postman is a GUI app focused on team collaboration through cloud workspaces. Posting is a TUI focused on keyboard ergonomics and Git-friendly local YAML files. Postman is broader (WebSockets, gRPC, mock servers, monitors); Posting is faster, more private, and version-controllable by default.
Is Posting open source?: Yes — the source code lives at github.com/darrenburns/posting under the Apache 2.0 license.
Does Posting support WebSocket or gRPC?: Not in version 2.10.0 (April 2026). Posting is currently HTTP/HTTPS only. WebSocket and gRPC support are tracked in the public roadmap but have no shipping date.
Can Posting import my existing Postman collections?: Yes. Posting imports Postman v2.1 collections and OpenAPI 3.0 specs, and you can paste a cURL command directly into the URL bar to convert it into a Posting request.

#postman-alternative

Hoppscotch

Posting

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