I Replaced Postman With a Browser Tab

I used Postman for three years. I had collections for every project, environment variables for staging vs production, and a workflow that was... fine. It worked. I never questioned it.

Then one morning, Postman asked me to log in again. My collections were "syncing." The app was using 800MB of RAM to display a text input and a JSON response. I opened Activity Monitor and stared at it for a second.

800MB. To send a GET request.

That was the moment I started looking for something else.

The problem wasn't Postman's features

Postman is genuinely powerful. It has test scripts, collection runners, mock servers, API documentation generators, team workspaces, version control, CI/CD integration. It does a lot.

But here's my confession: I used maybe 5% of those features.

My actual Postman workflow was:

Open Postman → find the request → change a parameter → hit Send → read the response → repeat

That's it. No scripts. No tests. No mock servers. I was using a Formula 1 car to drive to the grocery store.

What I switched to

I found DevBook — a browser-based API workbench. No desktop app. Just open a tab.

The first thing I noticed: it loaded in about 2 seconds. Not 2 seconds after a 300MB download. Two seconds total. Open tab. Ready.

The second thing I noticed: the template builder. You write your API request and mark the parts that change with {{placeholders}}. DevBook turns those into a fillable form. Instead of editing raw JSON, I fill in the blanks and hit send.

Here's what my OpenAI template looks like:

POST https://api.openai.com/v1/chat/completions

{{model}} → gpt-4o
{{prompt}} → Explain quantum computing in one sentence
{{max_tokens}} → 150

The API key? It auto-fills from the vault because I named it openai_key and the template uses {{openai_key}}. I store the key once and it fills everywhere.

What I lost

I'm going to be honest about what I gave up:

Scripting. Postman's pre-request and test scripts were useful for chaining requests. DevBook doesn't have scripting. When I need to chain requests, I write a quick Node script — which I probably should have been doing anyway.

Collections. Postman's folder hierarchy was nice for organizing hundreds of endpoints. DevBook uses a flat, searchable list. For my workflow (15-20 templates) that's actually faster. For 200+ endpoints, I might miss folders.

Team sync. DevBook has team features on the Pro plan, but Postman's team workspaces are more mature — forking, pull requests on collections, role-based access. If you have a large team with complex API workflows, Postman handles that better.

What I gained

Speed. From "I want to test something" to "I'm looking at the response" went from ~30 seconds (open Postman, wait for load, find request, edit) to about 5 seconds (open tab, search template, fill in the blank, send).

Simplicity. No more managing environments. No more workspace switching. No more "where did I save that request?" It's just a flat list of templates that I can search.

RAM. A browser tab uses maybe 50MB. Postman was using 800MB. That matters on a laptop.

Money. I was on Postman's team plan — $14/seat/month. For our 4-person team, that's $56/month. DevBook Pro is $19/month flat, unlimited users. We save $37/month. Not life-changing, but it's real money for no loss of functionality we actually used.

Who should NOT switch

If you rely on Postman's test scripts, collection runners, or mock servers — don't switch. Those features are genuinely useful and DevBook doesn't have them.

If you manage 500+ endpoints in organized collection hierarchies — Postman's folder system handles that better than a flat search list.

If you need GraphQL-specific tooling — Postman has it, DevBook doesn't.

Who should

If your Postman usage looks like mine — open it, send a request, read the response, close it — you're paying for (and loading) a lot of software you don't use.

DevBook is the tool I wished existed when I was using 5% of Postman. It does that 5% really well and doesn't bother with the other 95%.

Sometimes the best tool is the one that does less.