There are a few other options, such as Bruno.

https://www.usebruno.com/

But if you can spare the time to learn curl it's probably the most versatile.

What about Hoppscotch? hoppscotch.io

Postman locked all my locally saved requests away after an update unless I created an account with them. I wasn't updating very often because every update made it shittier.

Fuck postman.

I've been all in on Bruno ever since.

Bruno and Yaak are both pretty decent, I use Yaak on a daily basis. There's also HTTPie, Hoppscotch, Insomnia and Scalar.

In emacs, there is http mode, and you can have http code blocks straight in an org mode document, it's amazing. And it works with the overall org babel system, so variables can come from other blocks, potentially in different languages.

This technically breaks Rule 3, since it doesn’t cover a self-hosted service or application. However, “local over cloud” is always welcome here. So, leaving this post up, but locking to encourage discussion in the proper communities.

I still use Insomnia as I think it offers the better experience over Postman, but I wouldn't recommend it as it gets shifted more and more into a forced subscription model.

I have installed Hopscotch, but Insomnia still works so I never felt the need to switch - but I am ready to do so.