A free Postman alternative

Postman moved team collaboration behind a paid tier in 2026. Tiger is a free, open source, account-free API client where every collection is a folder of plain-text files in your own Git repository. Import your Postman collections in one step and pay nothing for any team size.

Why teams are looking for a Postman alternative

Postman's free plan was long the default choice for API teams. In 2026 it became a single-user plan: shared workspaces, team collections and environment sync now require a paid seat per person. For a 10-person team that is over $1,600 per year for tooling that was free a year earlier.

Beyond cost, several structural issues recur across feedback from teams who left:

• Collections stored in a proprietary cloud workspace cannot be diffed, branched or reviewed in a pull request.
• A mandatory account means an invitation workflow for every new engineer and a vendor relationship that outlives any individual contributor.
• Online-only features make the tool unreliable behind strict corporate firewalls, on restricted networks or when Postman's servers have an outage.

What to look for in a replacement

Not every tool that positions itself as a Postman alternative actually removes these constraints. The checklist below is worth running through before committing migration time.

• Actually free for teams. Some tools are free for individuals but charge once you add teammates. Confirm the free tier covers your whole team.
• No mandatory account. A tool that requires sign-up introduces a new vendor relationship for every engineer and a provisioning step that slows onboarding.
• Git-native collections. Collections stored as plain text in a normal folder can be committed, branched, diffed and reviewed in pull requests. Proprietary cloud workspaces cannot.
• Full offline capability. A tool that requires an internet connection to load your own request history or send a request is a liability on a plane, in an air-gapped lab or during an outage.
• Import fidelity. Migration is only painless if folders, headers, query parameters, request bodies, environments and variable references all carry across intact. Test an import before committing the team.
• Protocol breadth. Teams hit GraphQL, SOAP and sometimes WSDL alongside REST. A tool that handles all of these avoids introducing a second client for edge-case protocols.

How Tiger addresses each point

Tiger is an MIT-licensed, open source desktop application (Electron + React + TypeScript). Here is how it maps to each criterion above.

Free for any team size

Tiger is free to download and use commercially for any number of teammates. There is no per-seat price, no workspace tier and no collaboration feature gated behind a subscription. The full MIT license means you can also fork, self-host or audit the source.

No account required

Tiger requires no email address, no account creation and no license key. Download the installer, open the app, make a request. Onboarding a new engineer is the same as installing any other dev tool - no invitation workflow, no seat provisioning.

Collections as plain text in Git

Every request is stored as a .tiger file on disk. A collection is a folder; environments live in an environments/ subfolder. The format is human-readable and diff-friendly:

meta {
  name: Create post
  seq: 2
}

post {
  url: {{baseUrl}}/posts
}

headers {
  Content-Type: application/json
}

body:json {
  { "title": "Hello from Tiger" }
}

auth:bearer {
  token: {{token}}
}

capture {
  postId: body.id
}

Commit that folder to your repository. New team members get every request with git clone. API changes go through pull requests and have a full diff history. Tiger also has a built-in Git UI (status, diff, commit, pull, push, branch, clone) so you do not need to leave the app for routine version control operations.

Fully offline and local-first

All collections and request history live on your machine. Tiger makes no background network calls beyond your own API requests. It works on a plane, behind a strict corporate firewall, and during vendor outages. There is no cloud sync requirement of any kind.

Tiger does send anonymous usage analytics by default (app opened, request sent with method and status bucket only - no URLs, hostnames, header values or bodies). This can be turned off at any time in Settings under Privacy.

Postman import: what carries over

Tiger imports Postman Collection v2.0 and v2.1 JSON. The following carry over automatically:

• Folder and sub-folder structure
• Request method, URL and description
• Headers (including disabled headers, preserved with a ~ prefix)
• Query parameters
• Request bodies: JSON, raw text, form-data (including file rows), x-www-form-urlencoded
• {{variable}} references in URLs, headers, params and bodies
• Auth type and field values

Environment variable sets (Postman environments) import as Tiger environment files in the environments/ folder. Pre-request scripts and test scripts import where they map to Tiger's JavaScript scripting model.

Tiger also imports: Insomnia v4 exports, Bruno folders (.bru), OpenAPI 3 and Swagger 2 specs (.json or .yaml), WSDL/SOAP files (.wsdl / .xml, new in 0.4.0), and pasted curl commands.

Protocol breadth: REST, GraphQL, SOAP, MCP

Tiger handles REST requests with all standard body types (JSON, XML, text, form, multipart with file upload, GraphQL). GraphQL requests include a separate variables pane and schema introspection. SOAP is supported via raw XML bodies.

New in 0.4.0: WSDL import. Drop a .wsdl file onto Tiger and each binding operation becomes a POST request with a ready-to-fill SOAP envelope body, the correct Content-Type, and (for SOAP 1.1) the SOAPAction header. Both SOAP 1.1 and 1.2 are supported.

Tiger also ships a built-in MCP server (tiger-mcp binary). Register it with Claude, Cursor or any MCP-compatible AI client and the assistant can list, read and run requests from your collection without leaving the chat. This is a feature with no equivalent in Postman.

Tiger vs Postman: feature comparison

Migrate from Postman in three steps

The full walkthrough is in the importing guide, but the short path is:

1. Export from Postman. Right-click your collection in the Postman sidebar, choose Export, and save as Collection v2.1 JSON.
2. Import into Tiger. Open Tiger, click File > Import (or drag the .json file onto the sidebar). Your full folder structure appears immediately with all requests, headers, query params and bodies intact.
3. Commit to your Git repository. Tiger has written each request as a plain .tiger file on disk. Open Team sync, save a version, and sync. Every teammate gets the collection with a git pull.

Other free Postman alternatives worth knowing

Tiger is not the only option. Here is an honest look at the tools teams most commonly evaluate alongside it.

Frequently asked questions

Is Tiger really free for teams?

Yes. Tiger is free to download and use for any team size with no per-seat charge under the MIT license. If advanced team features ever become paid, existing users will receive advance notice before anything changes.

Do I need to create an account?

No. Tiger requires no account, no sign-up and no email address. Download it, open it, and start making requests. There is no invitation workflow and no seat provisioning step.

Does Tiger work offline?

Yes. All collections live on your machine and in your Git repositories. There is no cloud sync requirement and no background service that needs internet access. It works behind strict corporate firewalls and in air-gapped environments.

How does my team collaborate without a sync server?

Collections are plain text files. Commit them to your Git repository. Sharing is a git push, review is a pull request, and onboarding a new engineer is git clone. No sync subscription is required and there is no proprietary workspace format to deal with.

What protocols does Tiger support beyond REST?

REST, GraphQL (with schema introspection and a variables pane), SOAP via raw XML bodies, and WSDL import (new in 0.4.0, which generates SOAP envelope templates per binding operation). Tiger also ships an MCP server so AI clients can call your collections as tools.

Is my request data private?

Yes. Requests, tokens and responses never leave your machine. Tiger's optional anonymous analytics record only counts and status buckets - no URLs, hostnames, header values or bodies. Turn it off in Settings > Privacy at any time.

Related pages