HTTPie vs Hurl

HTTPie is an API testing client with a command-line tool and a graphical app for desktop and web. HTTPie for Terminal helps test and debug APIs, HTTP servers, and web services. Its features include expressive syntax, JSON, formatted and colorized output, persistent sessions, forms, file uploads and downloads, HTTPS, proxies, authentication, and custom request data and headers. GraphQL is supported. The Desktop and Web app includes AI-assisted work, spaces, collections, tabs, variables, environments, request previews, and autosave with realtime sync across devices. It can be used offline without an account, so requests can be prepared and previewed without sending them. Dedicated desktop versions are available for Mac, Windows, and Linux; Mac downloads cover Intel and Apple Silicon. The maker lists CLI installation options for any operating system. HTTPie for Web & Desktop is in public beta, and HTTPie for Terminal is an open-source CLI client. Both plans are listed at free.

Hurl is a command-line tool for running HTTP requests written in a plain-text format. It can fetch data or test HTTP sessions, including flows where later requests use values captured earlier. It can evaluate queries against response headers and bodies. Hurl works with HTML, REST, SOAP, GraphQL, XML, and JSON APIs, and examples cover assertions for status, headers, cookies, XPath, JSONPath, response duration, and SHA-256 body hashes. For CI/CD, it can produce text, JUnit, TAP, and HTML reports; its documentation covers GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD. The lightweight binary is written in Rust, with an HTTP engine powered by libcurl. Installation options include binaries or packages for Linux, macOS, and Windows, as well as Docker, Cargo, conda-forge, and npm. The precompiled Linux binary requires libc 2.35 or newer. Windows installation requires a separately installed Visual C++ Redistributable Package. Hurl is free under the Apache License, Version 2.0.