Commenters describe pattern of Postman's business model shift toward aggressive data collection
2 Nov 3 1:05 PM · 4d ago · 11 comments · 1 source · development 2 of 3
Multiple developers voice frustration that Postman transformed from a simple open-source-like tool into a venture-backed platform requiring logins, collecting API request data (including secrets in template variables), forcing subscriptions, and now injecting AI features. One commenter noted Postman logs all API requests including query parameters containing secrets, making it non-HIPAA-compliant.
“Postman logs detailed information on every single API request you make through its tool, including query parameters. If you disable outgoing network traffic to this logging endpoint, the entire app will stop working properly.”
primitivesuavesidgarimella Developer / reporterPostman Labs Software vendor
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What people said 11 voices · verbatim
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> for some reason they raised over $400M in funding and hired 1,500+ employeesYou know the reason. A bunch of people were able to take home a lot of money because of that growth and now have the option to FIRE themselves whenever they want to shake off the stress.That's the founder mentality that Y Combinator exists to leverage or encourage and…
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> Instead they now have to justify their valuation by forcing logins, collecting data, monthly subscriptions, AI features, etc.All those people who gave them millions in funding are expecting to make a return on that investment and that means prioritizing turning it into something that will make money by selling out users. The valuation is just a…
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I have been building Kreya [1] for over 6 years now as a Postman alternative. It's offline-first and privacy focused with a storage format made for git.In all our years, Kreya "just worked" for our users without any drama or unwanted changes, unlike most of our competitors...[1]
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> I still don't know how they're valued at $5B+ when I don't know a single developer who actually uses it anymoreB2B maybe? Usually these businesses thrive solely on flirting with the CTO and getting them to sign a lucrative contract and then mandate internal usage. I'm speaking from experience.
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If anyone is interested in a Postman alternative but likes TUIs and leans more toward using .http files, check out resterm[0].btw - I'm the author.[0]
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I don't understand how postman became the tool that it is today. The best version of it was just a logger and a formatter on top of an http client. The proto import was nice for gRPC. Who thought that relatively simple tool needed accounts and MCPs and whatever else they've thrown into it?
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I logged in to postman today after 3 years to use some public API, and god, it was so damn unusable. It took me navigating through "workspace", "environments", etc etc before I could hit the simplest of http endpoints.
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Who still uses Postman? In my experience it became insanely slow and bloated. Switched to Bruno. IMO, Postman is like uTorrent, everybody heard about it and many install because of inertia.
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Working in healthcare, and Postman got decertified by our Cyber team for this. We all switched to Bruno overnight. Their sales team is pinging us like gangbusters though.
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Why do all these tools require a paid account? Bruno specifically says it’s platform-free and stores everything in git.
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I cannot imagine 1500+ employees "working" on this. Wtf, it's a single person project.
All 3 developments of Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins, injects startup… →
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