On March 1, 2026 Postman cut its free plan to a single user — any team of two or more now needs the Team plan at $19 per user per month. Bruno is the open-source API client that took off in the aftermath: it’s free, runs entirely offline, and stores your collections as plain-text files in your own git repo. No account, no login, no cloud.

What works the same

Bruno does the daily API work you open Postman for: organize requests into collections, set environments and variables, write pre- and post-request scripts, chain requests, and run automated tests from the CLI for CI. Collections are saved in a readable markup called Bru, right next to your code, so request changes show up in pull requests and diff like everything else. For building, testing and documenting APIs, the core experience maps almost one-to-one.

What you give up

Bruno is offline by design — and intends to stay that way — so there’s no built-in cloud sync, no hosted workspaces, and no shared team library beyond what git gives you. You lose Postman’s mock servers, monitors, published API documentation portals and its huge template gallery. Real-time collaboration happens through version control, not a live shared workspace, which is a genuine mindset shift for some teams.

The math

Postman: free for one user only since March 2026; teams pay $19 per user per month (~$228/yr each) for the Team plan, more for Enterprise. Bruno: $0, open-source, for unlimited users — you’re already paying for git. A five-person team that would owe Postman about $1,140/yr pays nothing, and keeps every request definition in its own repository.

Migration — time & effort

Budget about an hour. Export your Postman collections and environments as JSON, then import them directly into Bruno — it reads Postman’s format. Commit the generated .bru files to your repo, reconnect environment secrets, and run a few requests plus your test scripts to confirm they pass. Keep Postman installed until the collections are verified in git, then drop the paid seats.