The All-in-One Alternative to Charles Proxy + Postman for Modern Developers

Remember the last time you had to continuously switch between 3 different tools just to debug a single API issue? Yeah, me too. It is 2025, and we are still juggling Charles Proxy for intercepting requests, Postman for testing APIs, and probably a dozen browser tabs for documentation. There has to be a better way, right?

Well, turns out there is. And it’s been sitting right under our noses.

The Tool Chaos Problem

Here’s what a typical debugging session looks like for most developers today. You run Charles Proxy to intercept your HTTP traffic, then jump over to Postman to test your API endpoints, then maybe switch to your IDE to actually write code, and somewhere in between, you are frantically searching Stack Overflow because nothing seems to work the way it should.

I have been there. Actually, I’m pretty sure we’ve all been there.

It’s not that these tools are flawed. Charles Proxy is an expert at intercepting and evaluating network traffic. For good reason, Postman has essentially taken over as the industry standard for API testing. The problem is that each of them only solves a portion of the puzzle. Additionally, context switching between multiple tools is killing our momentum in 2025, when developer productivity is more important than ever.

69% of developers have tried AI tools like ChatGPT for coding, according to recent data from JetBrains’ 2024 Developer Ecosystem survey. But what about the real tools we use on a daily basis? The ones that cost us hours of productivity but don’t make headlines? That’s where the real opportunity lies.

What Charles Proxy Actually Does (And What It Doesn’t)

Let’s talk about Charles first. If you’ve never used it, Charles Proxy is essentially a man-in-the-middle debugging tool. It sits between your application and the internet, intercepting every HTTP and HTTPS request that passes through. This is incredibly useful when you need to see what’s actually happening under the hood.

You can modify headers, throttle bandwidth to simulate slow connections, use breakpoints to pause requests, and map local files to remote URLs. It’s powerful stuff. The problem? Charles was built for a different era of web development. It’s a desktop application that costs money (around $50 for a license), and honestly, the learning curve can be steep if you’re just trying to quickly debug something.

Also, Charles doesn’t really help you with the other side of API development, the actual testing and documentation part. That’s where Postman comes in.

The Postman Phenomenon

Postman changed the game when it launched. Suddenly, testing APIs didn’t require writing curl commands or maintaining complicated scripts. You could just point, click, and fire off requests. The interface made sense. Collections kept things organized. Environments let you switch between dev, staging, and production without rewriting everything.

Today, Postman is used by over 25 million developers and reportedly 98% of Fortune 500 companies rely on it. That’s massive adoption. But here’s what nobody talks about: Postman has become bloated. What started as a simple API client has evolved into this massive platform with team collaboration features, API mocking, monitoring, and a whole ecosystem that most solo developers or small teams never actually need.

Don’t get me wrong, if you’re at a large company with complex API workflows and multiple teams, Postman makes sense. But for the rest of us? We’re paying for (or dealing with the limitations of the free tier) features we’ll never touch, all while still needing to jump over to Charles when we need to intercept actual traffic.

Enter the Era of Combined Tools

Things start to get interesting at this point. What if you could have both Postman’s API testing capabilities and Charles Proxy’s HTTP interception power in one location? And what if that tool wasn’t made for 2015 but rather for how we operate in 2025?

That’s the promise of tools like Requestly.

Now, before you roll your eyes thinking this is just another “Swiss Army knife” tool that does everything poorly, hear me out. Requestly isn’t trying to be everything to everyone. It’s specifically designed to solve the exact problem I just described: the constant context switching between debugging tools and API clients.

What Makes Requestly Different

Here’s what caught my attention about Requestly. It’s both a browser extension AND a desktop app, which means you can use it right where you’re already working. No need to configure system-wide proxies or mess with certificates for every device. Just install the extension, and you’re ready to go.

The HTTP interception capabilities are genuinely impressive. You can redirect URLs, modify request and response headers, inject custom JavaScript or CSS, delay requests to test loading states, modify API responses on the fly, and even block specific requests entirely. Basically, everything you’d do in Charles, but without leaving your browser.

But here’s where it gets really interesting. Requestly also includes a full-featured API client. You can design and test APIs, create collections and environments just like Postman, write pre and post scripts, import your existing Postman collections with a single click, and work with GraphQL endpoints.

The local-first approach is particularly clever. Your data lives on your machine, not in some cloud somewhere. You can sync it via Git, Google Drive, or whatever you prefer. For developers who care about privacy or work with sensitive data, this is huge.

Real-World Use Cases

Let me give you some concrete examples of how this actually works in practice.

Scenario one: You’re building a frontend for an API that isn’t finished yet. Normally, you’d either mock the entire backend or wait for the backend team to deploy something you can test against. With Requestly, you can intercept the API calls your frontend is making and return mock responses. You’re not waiting on anyone. You’re not setting up a separate mock server. You just define the rule once, and your frontend thinks it’s talking to a real API.

Scenario two: You’re debugging a production issue, but you can’t reproduce it locally. With Requestly’s session recording feature, you can capture the entire sequence of network requests, complete with timings and payloads. You can even share this recording with your team without having to write up a lengthy bug report. They can literally see what you saw.

Scenario three: You need to test how your app handles error states. Instead of actually breaking your backend or writing complex test scenarios, you can use Requestly to intercept specific API calls and return error responses. Need to test a 500 error? Done. Want to see how your UI handles a timeout? Easy. You control the responses without touching any backend code.

The Enterprise Security Angle

One thing that often gets overlooked in these discussions is security and compliance. The fact that your debugging tool transmits data via external servers may be a deal-breaker if you work for an organization with stringent security regulations.

With SOC-II compliance, single sign-on support, role-based access control, and the option to run everything locally, Requests tackles this head-on. Unless you specifically decide to share it, no data leaves your network. This is standard practice for enterprise teams, but since developer tools frequently overlook it, it’s important to bring it up.

Performance and Speed

Let’s discuss something that is more important than we would like to acknowledge: the tool’s actual speed. No one wants to increase the latency of their development process. For the majority of use cases, Requestly operates as a lightweight browser extension, resulting in low overhead. The desktop application provides system-wide interception when you require more power without the lag that other proxies may cause.

Since I’ve been using it for a few weeks, I must admit that most of the time I forget it’s even running. It’s a positive thing. Until you need them, tools should disappear into the background.

The Migration Path

If you’re already deeply invested in Postman collections or have Charles Proxy rules set up, the thought of migrating to a new tool probably makes you groan. I get it. But Requestly actually makes this pretty painless.

For Postman users, there’s a one-click import for collections and environments. Your request history, your variables, your pre-request scripts… all of it comes over. You’re not starting from scratch.

For Charles users, while there isn’t a direct import (yet), the mental model is similar enough that translating your rules is straightforward. And honestly, if you’re like most developers, you probably don’t have that many active rules anyway. Most of us are recreating the same few patterns over and over.

What About the Learning Curve?

Fair question. Any new tool requires some investment in learning. But here’s the thing: if you already know Postman or Charles, you already know 80% of what you need to use Requestly effectively. The UI patterns are familiar. The concepts map directly. You’re not learning some entirely new paradigm.

The documentation is actually pretty solid, which is refreshing. There are guides for common use cases, video tutorials, and a community that’s surprisingly active. When I got stuck trying to figure out how to modify GraphQL responses, I found an answer in about five minutes.

The Open Source Advantage

One thing I haven’t mentioned yet: Requestly is open source. You can literally go look at the code on GitHub if you want. This matters for a few reasons.

First, transparency. You’re not trusting a black box with your network traffic.

Second, extensibility. If you need something specific that isn’t built in, you can potentially add it yourself or wait for the community to build it.

Third, longevity. Open source projects tend to stick around, especially when they solve real problems.

The commercial model is actually pretty smart too. The core tool is free and open source. The paid tiers add team collaboration features and enterprise support. So if you’re a solo developer or small team, you’re probably fine with the free version. If you’re at a bigger company that needs SSO and role-based access, you pay for those features.

The Comparison Table Nobody Asked For (But Everyone Needs)

Alright, let’s break down how these tools actually stack up:

What This Actually Means for Your Workflow

Let me paint a picture of how this changes your day-to-day work. You’re building a new feature that involves calling a third-party API. In the old world, you’d open Postman to test the API endpoints and make sure you understand the response structure. Then you’d start integrating it into your frontend. But wait, the API is rate-limited and you’ve used up your quota for the hour. So you fire up Charles to map the API calls to a local JSON file with mock data.

Now you’re running two tools, switching between them constantly, and probably have a text file somewhere with notes about what each rule does because you’ll forget by tomorrow.

With a combined tool, you test the API in the same place where you’ll intercept and mock it. Your mock responses live right next to your test requests. When you need to modify a header or test an edge case, you’re not context switching. You’re just working.

It sounds small, but these small friction points add up. A McKinsey study found that reducing wasted time by just five minutes per developer on a 500-person team could save enough to fund an entire additional team focused on standardization. Five minutes. That’s how much time you waste switching between tools and loading your mental context each time.

The GraphQL Story

Here’s something that surprised me. GraphQL is eating the world, but a lot of traditional debugging tools handle it poorly. The single-endpoint nature of GraphQL makes targeted interception tricky. How do you modify just one specific query when everything goes through the same URL?

Requestly handles this with operation name filters. You can target specific GraphQL operations without affecting others. This is huge if you’re working on a complex frontend that makes dozens of different GraphQL calls. You can mock out just the problematic one while letting everything else hit the real API.

Mobile and Cross-Platform Testing

One area where desktop proxy tools like Charles shine is mobile device testing. You set up the proxy on your computer, configure your phone to route traffic through it, and boom, you can see and modify mobile app traffic.

Requestly’s desktop app does this too, but with better certificate handling and easier setup. The documentation actually walks you through configuring Android and iOS devices, and I didn’t run into the certificate trust issues that used to plague me with other tools.

The Documentation Problem

Let’s be real: good documentation is rare. Most developer tools have either no documentation or way too much documentation that’s organized poorly. Requestly’s docs are actually usable. They’re organized by use case rather than by feature, which is how humans actually think about problems.

Need to test how your app handles slow networks? There’s a guide for that. Want to inject a script to override some frontend logic? There’s a recipe. It’s not exhaustive, but it covers the 80% use cases that matter.

Team Collaboration Without the Overhead

If you work on a team, you’ve probably experienced the pain of trying to share debugging setups. Someone discovers a clever way to mock an API, but explaining it to the rest of the team involves a Slack message, some screenshots, and probably a Loom video.

With shared workspaces in Requestly, you can export your rules and share them with teammates. They import it, and boom, they have the exact same setup. No more “it works on my machine” when the issue is actually your local proxy configuration.

But here’s what I appreciate: you’re not forced into this. If you just want to work solo, you can. The collaboration features are there when you need them, but they don’t get in the way when you don’t.

Privacy and Data Ownership

I mentioned this earlier, but it’s worth expanding on. In an era where every tool wants to be a SaaS platform, where your data lives in someone else’s cloud, Requestly’s local-first approach is refreshing.

Your collections, your mock data, your session recordings… all of it lives on your disk. You can version it with Git. You can back it up however you want. You can sync it using your preferred service, or not sync it at all. This matters more than most people realize, especially if you’re working with sensitive data or in regulated industries.

When You Shouldn’t Use Requestly

To be honest, there are situations in which this tool might not be the best choice. It might not be worthwhile to migrate if you are already well-established in the Postman ecosystem with numerous shared collections, monitors, and integrations with your CI/CD pipeline. With its extensive feature set and years of development, Postman is difficult to replace overnight.

Similarly, if you need incredibly advanced proxy features like bandwidth throttling down to the byte, or custom scripting for request modification that goes beyond what Requestly offers, Charles might still be your tool.

And if you’re at a large enterprise that’s already standardized on specific tools, the switching costs might outweigh the benefits, even if Requestly is technically better for individual developers.

The Future of Developer Tools

Here’s what I think is happening. We’re moving away from the era of specialized, single-purpose tools toward integrated workflows. Not because one big tool is always better, but because the context switching cost is too high.

Think about how VS Code won over specialized IDEs. It wasn’t because it was the best at any one thing. It was because it was good enough at everything and you could stay in one environment. The same principle applies here.

The future isn’t Charles OR Postman. It’s tools that understand you need both capabilities and let you flow between them naturally. Requestly is an early example of this trend, but I doubt it’ll be the last.

My Actual Experience Using It

The thing that won me over wasn’t any single feature. It was the reduction in friction. Instead of thinking “okay, I need to intercept this call, so I need to stop what I’m doing, open Charles, configure a rule, and remember to turn it off later,” I just create a rule in the same tool I’m already using to test the API. It sounds small, but it compounds.

The Open Source Community

One unexpected benefit has been the community. Because Requestly is open source, there’s an active GitHub with feature requests, bug reports, and discussions. I’ve seen features I wanted get implemented within weeks because other developers wanted them too.

This is different from the traditional “submit a feature request and wait” model of most commercial tools. If enough people want something, it happens. And if you’re technically inclined, you can contribute directly.

Getting Started Without Getting Overwhelmed

If you’re thinking about trying this, here’s my advice: don’t try to replace everything at once. Start with one use case. Maybe you’re currently using Charles to redirect production scripts to local versions for debugging. Set that up in Requestly first. Get comfortable with how rules work.

Then add a second use case. Maybe you import one Postman collection that you use frequently. Test it out. See how it feels.

Only after you’re comfortable with the basics should you think about migrating more of your workflow. This tool is powerful, but like any powerful tool, it can be overwhelming if you try to learn everything at once.

The Bottom Line

Look, I’m not trying to sell you on abandoning tools you love. If Postman works great for your team and you’ve got years of collections built up, stick with it. If you’re a Charles power user who knows every keyboard shortcut, you do you.

But if you’re like me and you’ve been frustrated by the constant tool switching, the context loading, the “which tool do I need for this task” mental overhead, Requestly is worth a serious look.

It’s not perfect. No tool is. But it’s solving a real problem in a thoughtful way, and in my experience, that’s rare enough to be worth celebrating.

The developer tools landscape is changing. We’re getting smarter about what makes us productive, and it’s not always about having the most features or the biggest team behind a tool. Sometimes it’s about reducing friction and letting developers focus on what they’re actually trying to build.

And honestly? That’s what matters.

Links and Resources

If you want to try Requestly yourself, head over to requestly.com to download the browser extension or desktop app. The core features are free, and you can import your Postman collections to try it out without committing.

The GitHub repository is at github.com/requestly/requestly if you want to contribute or just poke around the code.

And if you end up trying it, I’d genuinely be curious to hear what you think. Tools like this live or die based on whether they actually solve real problems for real developers, not based on how good their marketing is.

What’s your current debugging and API testing setup? Are you juggling multiple tools or have you found a workflow that actually works for you? Drop a comment and let me know what you think.