Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Stoplight

Hoppscotch Community Edition is an open-source API development ecosystem for sending, testing, and organizing requests across common API styles and real-time protocols. It provides a fast, lightweight web UI and supports local/offline workflows as well as optional sync and team collaboration features.

Key Features

• API client for REST/HTTP with headers, params, body types, auth, and response inspection
• GraphQL client with schema fetching and documentation support
• Real-time protocol tools: WebSocket, Server-Sent Events (SSE), MQTT, and Socket.IO
• Collections and folders for organizing requests, plus import/export and shareable request links
• Environments and variables, with pre-request scripts and post-request tests
• PWA support with offline capability and low resource usage
• Theming, keyboard shortcuts, and bulk edit for request data

Use Cases

• Developing and debugging APIs during backend and frontend development
• Testing real-time connections (WebSocket/SSE/MQTT/Socket.IO) during integration work
• Maintaining reusable request collections and environment variables for teams or projects

Limitations and Considerations

• Some advanced enterprise capabilities (such as certain SSO features) may be edition-dependent.

Hoppscotch Community Edition is a strong alternative to tools like Postman or Insomnia for developers who want a fast, modern interface and broad protocol support. It is well-suited for both quick ad-hoc requests and structured, repeatable API testing workflows.

EventCatalog is an open source documentation tool that helps teams model and document distributed software architecture. It focuses on making domains, services, events, schemas, and their relationships discoverable and searchable across event-driven and microservice systems.

Key Features

• Markdown- and MDX-driven content for documenting domains, services, messages/events, and schemas
• Generation and synchronization of catalog content from OpenAPI and AsyncAPI inputs
• Schema and architecture primitives designed to capture ownership, dependencies, and relationships
• Diagram support (including versioned diagrams stored with your repository) to document system views and flows
• CLI-driven workflows suitable for local use and CI/CD automation
• Extensible via SDK/API to integrate with custom brokers, registries, or internal systems
• AI-oriented capabilities such as querying structured architecture knowledge and MCP server integration

Use Cases

• Create a searchable source of truth for event-driven architectures across teams and repositories
• Keep architecture documentation aligned with API/spec changes by regenerating catalog content in CI/CD
• Improve onboarding and incident response by making owners, dependencies, and event flows easy to discover

EventCatalog works well for organizations adopting DDD, microservices, and event-driven architecture who want documentation to evolve with their system rather than drift over time. It is especially useful when architecture knowledge is fragmented across multiple tools and teams.

SQLPage is an SQL-only web application builder that turns SQL files into interactive web pages, forms, charts, and APIs. It runs as a web server and maps query results to prebuilt UI components, letting you build data-centric apps without writing backend code.

Key Features

• SQL-driven pages: serve routes by executing corresponding .sql files
• Built-in UI components for lists, tables, cards, charts, forms, and navigation
• CRUD workflows via SQL statements (SELECT/INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) with request parameters
• Database connectivity for SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, and Microsoft SQL Server, plus ODBC-compatible engines
• Custom components and theming via Handlebars templates and optional HTML/CSS/JS
• Can expose JSON endpoints to build simple REST-style APIs
• Single-binary deployment with Docker support

Use Cases

• Internal admin tools and operational dashboards with drill-down navigation
• Lightweight CRUD apps for teams that already use a relational database
• Rapid prototyping of database-backed tools and simple data APIs

SQLPage is a good fit when you want a maintainable, database-first approach to building web interfaces, keeping logic close to SQL while still allowing optional frontend customization as needed.

Yaade is an open-source, self-hosted, collaborative API development environment. It enables teams to store, organize, and test API work on their own infrastructure, promoting secure collaboration and sharing of API collections.

Key Features

• Self-hosted: data never leaves your own server. (github.com)
• Multi-user: manage users and their permissions. (github.com)
• Persistent: data remains consistent across container or server restarts. (github.com)
• Easy single-file data import / export. (github.com)
• Proxy requests through your browser or through the server. (github.com)
• REST and Websockets with Markdown documentation support. (github.com)
• Scripts: run cron jobs or API-based scripts; execute requests or tests in pure JavaScript. (github.com)
• Import collections from OpenAPI or Postman; export to multiple languages and frameworks. (github.com)
• Dark mode is the default UI experience. (github.com)

Use Cases

• Collaborative API development and testing: teams can share and co-edit API collections and tests in a self-hosted workspace. (github.com)
• OpenAPI/Postman imports and client generation: migrate existing API definitions into Yaade and export to various languages/frameworks. (github.com)
• Secure, on-prem API workbench: run Yaade on your own server with user permissions and persistent data across restarts. (github.com)

Limitations and Considerations

• No hosted cloud instance is described by default; Yaade is built as a self-hosted solution and is typically deployed via Docker. For installation guidance see the official docs. (docs.yaade.io)

Conclusion

Yaade provides a self-hosted, collaborative environment for API development, testing, and documentation. Its emphasis on on-premises data, multi-user access, and OpenAPI/Postman compatibility makes it suitable for teams prioritizing security and shareable API workspaces.