Our take
Inactiveno commits in over a year- Activity
- 19
- Community
- 68
- Issues
- 21
- Pull requests
- 20
+74 stars in the last 30 days
- More contributors than 78% of the projects we track
HTTPie offers a practical, approachable way to work with HTTP from the terminal, but its inactive maintenance status is an important adoption concern.
Good fit if
- You want a Python-based CLI for readable API requests and formatted responses.
- Your workflow benefits from JSON support, sessions, uploads, or command-line downloads.
- You can evaluate the project’s current maintenance level and accept the BSD-3-Clause license.
Look elsewhere if
- Your team needs a project with recent commits, releases, or demonstrated recent issue and pull-request activity.
- You need evidence of active maintenance before depending on a tool in a critical workflow.
All health signals
| Last commit | 2024-12-17 (1.9 years ago) |
|---|---|
| Commits, last 90 days | 0 |
| Releases, last 12 months | 0 (latest 3.2.4, 2024-11-01) |
| Contributors | 100+ (top contributor: 74% of commits) |
| Issues closed, last 90 days | 0 |
| Pull requests merged, last 90 days | 0 |
| Project age | 14 years |
Checked on 2026-11-03 with the GitHub API.
Project history
Daily GitHub snapshots since Oct 7, 2026. History covers stars and forks; health signals are not tracked historically.
Stars
38,712Forks
4,041Change since Nov 13, 2026: +3 stars·+2 forks
Overview
HTTPie CLI is a Python command-line HTTP client for testing, debugging, and interacting with APIs and HTTP servers. It aims to make sending requests from the terminal more human-friendly, using readable syntax and formatted, colorized output.
The http and https commands support requests with methods, headers, data, and authentication. This makes HTTPie useful when you want to inspect or exercise an API without writing a separate script or composing a less readable command.
Key Features
- Readable syntax for sending HTTP and HTTPS requests.
- Formatted and colorized terminal responses.
- Built-in JSON support for request data and responses.
- Custom methods, headers, authentication, and arbitrary request data.
- Form submissions and file uploads.
- Persistent sessions for retaining request state.
- Proxy support and offline mode for constructing requests without sending them.
- Downloads with a
wget-like workflow.
Use Cases
- API developers can quickly try endpoints with custom methods, headers, and JSON bodies.
- Engineers debugging a service can inspect formatted responses directly in a terminal.
- Testers can make authenticated requests and exercise API behavior without building a dedicated test script.
- Developers can prepare a request in offline mode before sending it, or use sessions when making related requests.
What you need
Detected in the repository
- Python (from setup.py)
- A test suite and automated checks on GitHub Actions
License in plain words
BSD-3-Clausepermissive
- Commercial use: yes
- Modify and redistribute: yes
- You must keep: the copyright and license notice; the authors' names cannot endorse your product
- Share your changes: no
A summary, not legal advice: the LICENSE file is what applies.
Getting Started
Install HTTPie using the installation instructions, then try:
https httpie.io/hello
See the README and documentation for installation details and more examples.
Alternatives
- desktop: HTTPie Desktop sends API requests through a graphical interface, while HTTPie CLI provides a command-line workflow.
| Project | Language | License | Stars | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cli | Python | BSD-3-Clause | 38.7k | Inactive |
| desktop | not specified | Other | 4k | Inactive |
Considerations
The repository is marked inactive: it has had no commits in over a year, no releases in the last year, and no recorded issue closures or merged pull requests in the recent measurement period. The project has contributions from many people, so contributor concentration is not identified as a risk, but the lack of recent activity still warrants checking whether the current version meets your needs. The project requires Python. Its BSD-3-Clause license permits broad reuse subject to its license terms and notices.
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