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Bifurc vs Postman
Postman is the best-known API client: you write requests, group them into collections, and share them with a team through Postman's cloud. Bifurc covers the same request-writing ground, then sits in front of your local services as a proxy, so it can also give them names, capture what they send, and mock what they receive.
If you are looking for a Postman alternative that is free, needs no account, and keeps everything on your machine, this page shows where the two overlap and where they differ.
At a glance
| Bifurc | Postman | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free, every feature included | Free plan limited to one user since March 2026; paid plans for teams |
| Account | Not needed. GitHub sign-in is optional, only for sync | A Postman account is used for sync and collaboration |
| Where your work lives | Files in a git-backed workspace on your disk | Postman's cloud by default, synced to the app |
| App | Native Rust desktop app and CLI | Electron desktop app, web app and CLI |
| Platforms | Windows and Linux | Windows, macOS, Linux and the web |
| REST, GraphQL, gRPC, WebSocket, Socket.IO | Yes | Yes |
| SOAP from a WSDL | Yes, requests are built from the WSDL | Raw XML requests |
| SSE and MCP | Yes | Yes |
Custom *.localhost domains | Yes, built-in reverse proxy | No |
| Proxy rules that redirect or rewrite traffic | Yes, with request and response scripts | No |
| Capture traffic from your browser or app | Yes, forward proxy and browser extension | Yes, through its proxy or Interceptor |
| Mocks | Matched on real traffic: your app keeps calling the real URL | Mock servers with their own URL you point the client at |
| Pre-request and post-response scripts | Yes | Yes |
| Secrets | Passphrase-encrypted vaults, masked in captured traffic | Vault and secret variables |
Mocks that need no URL change
A Postman mock server has its own address, so you change your app's configuration to call it. Bifurc's mocks live in the proxy. When traffic for the matching URL passes through, Bifurc answers instead of the real service, or changes only part of the real answer: just the status, just the body, some headers, or the timing. Your frontend keeps calling the same API, and turning the mock off sends it back to the real one.
Mocks can be made from a cURL command or straight from a captured request, and they support regex matching, variables, server-sent events and chunked streaming. See Advanced Mocking.
Your local services get names
Postman sends requests; it does not route traffic. Bifurc's reverse proxy gives each local service a name such as api.localhost or web.localhost, which resolve to your machine without editing a hosts file. A Services screen lists what is listening on each port, so you can map one in a click, and an HTTPS toggle serves the names over TLS with a local certificate. See Localhost Domain Mapping.
Everything is a file in git
Every mapping, rule, request, mock and environment you save is a file in a workspace with git history. You can diff a change, restore an earlier version, or publish the workspace to a GitHub repository you own and import it on another machine. Nothing is uploaded unless you publish it. See Git-Backed Workspaces.
When Postman is the better choice
- You need macOS or a browser-based client today. Bifurc runs on Windows and Linux.
- Your team designs APIs in Postman, publishes documentation from collections, or relies on Postman's monitors, Flows or public API network.
- You want collaboration features such as comments, roles and shared team workspaces managed in the cloud.
When Bifurc is the better choice
- You work on services running on your own machine and want them reachable by name, captured, and mocked, in the same app you send requests from.
- You want an API client with no account, no seat limit and no cloud, where everything is a plain file you can commit.
- You test gRPC, GraphQL, SOAP, WebSocket, SSE, Socket.IO and MCP side by side and want one native app for all of them.
- You want the same workspace from a terminal or CI: the
bifurccommand sends requests and runs health checks, and its exit code says whether the tests passed. See Command Line.
Moving from Postman
- Install Bifurc from the download page and create a workspace.
- Bring requests across by pasting the cURL command for each one (Postman's code snippet panel can produce it). Bifurc fills in the method, URL, headers and body.
- Recreate your environments as Bifurc environments. Put tokens and keys in a vault rather than a plain variable.
- Point your browser at Bifurc with the Bifurc Companion extension to start capturing real traffic, and turn any captured call into a saved request or a mock.