Knock vs Insomnia
Notifications-as-a-service: in-app feeds, email, push, SMS, chat via one API
vs. Open-source API client + design platform — the developer-first Postman alternative
Pricing tiers
Knock
Developer
Free forever. 10K messages, 500 guide users, 500 AI credits/month.
$0 base (usage-based)
Starter
$250/mo. 50K messages, 2.5K guide users, 2K AI credits. Remove branding.
$250/mo
Enterprise
Custom pricing. White-label, i18n, data warehouse, Datadog, SCIM, SAML, HIPAA/BAA.
Custom
Insomnia
Free
$0. Unlimited local. Cloud sync with E2EE. 1 project. Local + Git storage. Up to 3 members.
Free
Pro
$5/user/mo annual. Unlimited projects, cloud sync + Git sync + Insomnia AI.
$5/mo
Enterprise
$25/user/mo. SSO, SAML, RBAC, audit log, dedicated SLA, VPC.
$25/mo
Free-tier quotas head-to-head
Comparing starter on Knock vs free on Insomnia.
| Metric | Knock | Insomnia |
|---|---|---|
| guide users | 2500 users | — |
| guide users overage | $0.05/user USD/user | — |
| messages monthly | 50000 messages/mo | — |
| messages overage | $0.005/message USD/message | — |
Features
Knock · 13 features
- AI Agents — Autonomous notification drafting & workflow generation.
- Batch + Digest — Group notifications into digests on schedule or window.
- Chat — Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord.
- Email — Send via SendGrid/Postmark/Resend/Mailgun/AWS SES as relays.
- Guides — In-product messaging, announcements, modals, banners.
- i18n / Localization — Translate templates by user locale.
- In-App Feed — Notification inbox with React/Vue/iOS/Android drop-in components.
- Multi-tenancy — Per-tenant branding, preferences, quiet hours.
- Outbound Webhooks — Subscribe to delivery events.
- Preferences — User + tenant preference center with granular controls.
- Push — iOS (APNs), Android (FCM), Expo, Web Push.
- SMS — Twilio, MessageBird, Telnyx, Vonage as providers.
- Workflows — Visual notification orchestration (branch, batch, delay, throttle).
Insomnia · 19 features
- API Design (OpenAPI) — Spec editor + preview.
- Auth Helpers — OAuth, AWS, Hawk, Bearer, etc.
- Cloud Sync (E2EE) — Opt-in encrypted sync.
- Environments — Variables per env.
- Git Sync — Version with your repo.
- GraphQL — Query + schema explorer.
- gRPC — gRPC client.
- HTTP Client — REST request builder.
- inso CLI — Run API tests + lint specs in CI.
- Insomnia AI — AI-assisted request building.
- Local-First Storage — No account required.
- Mock Server — Build mocks from OpenAPI (Pro).
- Plugins — Extend via Node.js.
- Request Collections — Grouped requests.
- Scratch Pad — Local-only mode (re-added after backlash).
- SOAP — WSDL + SOAP.
- Teams — Shared workspaces.
- Templating Engine — Nunjucks + JS snippets.
- WebSockets — WS connection + messages.
Developer interfaces
| Kind | Knock | Insomnia |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | Knock CLI | inso CLI |
| SDK | knockapi (Python), knockapi (Ruby), knock-elixir, knock-go, knock-java, @knocklabs/node, @knocklabs/react | Plugin API |
| REST | Knock REST API | Insomnia Cloud API |
| MCP | Knock MCP Server | — |
| OTHER | Outbound Webhooks | Git Sync (built-in), Insomnia Desktop |
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