Kurlo vs Postman
Kurlovs Postman.
Postman is a cloud API platform with a desktop app. Kurlo is a desktop API client that keeps everything on your disk. If you use Postman to send requests, run tests and share collections, Kurlo does that without an account or a per-seat plan, and your pm.* scripts come with you unchanged.
Checked 15 October 2026
Side by side.
| Kurlo | Postman | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, every featureNo paid plan to grow into | Free for 1 userSolo $9, Team $19 per user a month |
| Account | Not needed | Required for collectionsSigned out, it only sends one-off requests |
| Team sharing | Any Git host, no seat limit | Team planFree users cannot create or join a team workspace |
| Where collections live | Your disk, as YAML in your Git repo | Postman’s cloudOr local files with Native Git in the desktop app |
| Source code | MIT | Closed |
| Built on | Native Go with the system WebView | Electron |
| Postman scripts | pm.* scripts run as written | Native |
| Mock server | Local, no request capWorks offline, no account | Cloud-hostedNeeds an account |
| MCP | MCP client and MCP serverAgents can run and write your collections | MCP client |
| Browser CORS and CSP checks | Built in | No |
| Sync cookies from your browser | Extension for Chromium and Firefox | Interceptor extension |
Checked against Postman pricing and the vendor’s documentation on 15 October 2026. Prices are per user per month on annual billing. If something here is out of date, open an issue.
Download size, measured
Receipts.
Official downloads on 23 October 2026: Kurlo 2.4.1 and Postman latest. 1 MB is 1,048,576 bytes.
Why switch
Why people move.
No. 01
No seat math
Since March 2026 Postman’s Free plan is one user, and working together starts at $19 per user a month. Kurlo has no plan at all: a team shares a workspace through any Git host, however many people are on it.
No. 02
Scripts keep working
Pre-request and test scripts run in Kurlo as they were written for Postman: pm.test, pm.expect with chai, pm.sendRequest, CryptoJS, require for lodash, ajv and uuid, and legacy globals such as tests[] and postman.setEnvironmentVariable.
No. 03
No account in between
Open the app and send. Collections, environments and history stay on your machine, and secrets stay in an encrypted local file instead of a cloud vault.
No. 04
Collections reviewed in pull requests
Every request is a readable YAML file in your repository, so an API change and the requests that test it land in the same commit.
No. 05
Mocks without the cloud
Saved responses from your Postman collection become examples, and Kurlo serves them on localhost while the real endpoint is still being built.
No. 06
See what the browser will do
Send a request the way a page on another origin would, and get the CORS or CSP error before your users do.
Moving from Postman
Bring it all.
Postman’s own export carries over, and nothing in Postman is changed. Migration guide
- In Postman, export the collection as Collection v2.1, and export each environment.
- Drop the files on Kurlo’s sidebar, or use the import button next to +.
- Pick an environment and send a request you use often to check it.
What comes across: Folders, requests, bodies, auth (Basic, Bearer, API key, Digest, OAuth 2.0 and AWS SigV4), environments, saved responses as examples, and pre-request and test scripts. Kurlo can also export a collection back to Postman v2.1.
Free · MIT · No account
Switch it.
Import your Postman collection and keep working. No account, nothing to rewrite.
macOS 12+ · Windows 10+ · Ubuntu 22.04+ · x64 and Arm64