Xata vs Insomnia
Serverless Postgres with branching, zero-downtime schema changes + OpenAI embeddings
vs. Open-source API client + design platform — the developer-first Postman alternative
Pricing tiers
Xata
Free
$0. 15GB storage. 10 branches. Unlimited databases. Community support.
Free
Pro
$20/mo + usage. More compute, higher concurrency, priority support.
$20/mo
Enterprise
Custom. SSO, dedicated support, VPC peering, SOC 2.
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 free on Xata vs free on Insomnia.
| Metric | Xata | Insomnia |
|---|---|---|
| No overlapping quota metrics for these tiers. | ||
Features
Xata · 11 features
- Ask Xata (OpenAI) — Natural language Q&A over data.
- Branching — Copy-on-write DB branches.
- DB Metrics — Query perf + connection metrics.
- Migration GUI — Visual schema change workflow.
- pgroll Migrations — Zero-downtime schema evolution via views.
- PITR Backups — Point-in-time restore.
- PR Preview Environments — Branch-per-PR with CI integration.
- Search — Built-in full-text search indexing.
- Vanilla Postgres — Unmodified Postgres 15+.
- Vector Search — pgvector-based embeddings + Q&A.
- Xata Copilot — AI SQL + schema assistant.
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 | Xata | Insomnia |
|---|---|---|
| CLI | pgroll CLI (OSS), xata CLI | inso CLI |
| SDK | @xata.io/client (TS), xata (Python) | Plugin API |
| REST | Xata REST API | Insomnia Cloud API |
| OTHER | Direct Postgres (pgroll), Xata Dashboard | Git Sync (built-in), Insomnia Desktop |
Staxly is an independent catalog of developer platforms. Some links to Xata and Insomnia may be affiliate links — Staxly may earn a commission if you sign up through them, at no extra cost to you. Pricing is verified against vendor pages at publication time — reconfirm before buying.
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