Rest Hippo is a desktop API client that never phones home. Send a request the moment it installs — no sign-in, no workspace to create, no cloud sync waiting to be configured. Requests run natively in the main process rather than in a renderer, so CORS never applies and the response you see is the response the server sent. Collections, environments and history are files in a directory you choose, which means they diff, they back up, and they go in git if you want them to.
macOS · Windows · Linux · Electron · Vanilla JS · Apache-2.0
What it does
A free, offline alternative to Postman and Insomnia. Collections are plain files on your disk, HTTP runs outside the browser so nothing is subject to CORS, and there is no account to make.
GET through PATCH, JSON, form and raw bodies, file uploads, and full control of headers and query parameters — with a response viewer that pretty-prints, searches, and renders images inline.
A tree of requests you can favourite, reorder, and search. Everything is stored as readable files on disk, so a collection is something you can commit, diff, and hand to someone else.
Collection and environment variables with typeahead, so {{baseUrl}} resolves per environment and switching from staging to production is one dropdown, not a find-and-replace.
A validated GraphQL editor with schema introspection, and a WebSocket client that holds a connection open and logs the traffic in both directions.
Bearer tokens, basic auth, API keys, and a real OAuth 2 flow that completes the round trip and stores the result with the request rather than in your clipboard.
Pre-request and post-response scripting, plus assertions that turn a request into a check you can re-run — with a timeline showing exactly where the time went.
Downloads
Version — · free to download and use. No account required.
Every build is published on GitHub Releases, where you will also find the release notes and every previous version. Prefer to build it yourself? The source is right there.
Its own site
resthippo.com carries the full guide, the complete download list, and every release note.
Open resthippo.comThat is resthippo.com itself, live — not a screenshot. Click anywhere on it to open the real thing.
Where to go next
The herd page is the introduction. These are the places the project actually lives.