Thunder Client website screenshot

Thunder Client

Thunder Client is a lightweight REST API client extension for Visual Studio Code created by Ranga Vadhineni, providing a clean interface for sending HTTP requests, managing collections, and testing APIs without leaving the editor. With nearly 7 million installs, it pioneered GUI-based API testing in VS Code with 100% local storage, scriptless testing, Git Sync for team collaboration, GraphQL support, and an advanced CLI for CI/CD integration. Thunder Client supports importing collections from Postman, Insomnia, Hoppscotch, and OpenAPI 3.0, and offers pre/post-request scripting and environment variables.

Thunder Client publishes 2 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include API Client, API Testing, CI/CD, CLI, and Collection.

The Thunder Client catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Thunder Client’s developer surface includes documentation, GitHub presence, pricing, changelog, and 11 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Source on GitHub
24.8/100 emerging ▬ flat Agent 3/100 human only Front door AI 1/6 silent saas Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0
AccessFreemium
2 APIs
API ClientAPI TestingCI/CDCLICollectionGraphQLREST ClientVS Code

Kin Score

Kin Score Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.23.0
Composite quality — 24.8/100 · emerging
Contract Quality 3.1 / 21
Developer Ergonomics 3.6 / 17
Access Clarity 4.5 / 17
Operational Transparency 3.2 / 11
Contract Governance 2.4 / 10
Discoverability 4.9 / 9
Regulatory Posture 1.6 / 15
Agent readiness — 3/100 · human only
Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18
Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10
Documented Reversibility 0 / 6
MCP Server 0 / 12
Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10
Idempotency 0 / 9
Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8
Request/Response Examples 0 / 7
Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7
Typed Event Surface 0 / 6
Agent Skills 0 / 5
Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4
Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3
A2A Agent Card 0 / 8
Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4
Delegated User Identity 0 / 6
Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5
Registration Without a Human 0 / 6
Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5
Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.
Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.
The six quality facets above are damped to 85 points between them, because the conditional facet above carries the other 15. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 85% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.
Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from github.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client: open an issue to ask a question, or submit a pull request to add artifacts. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

What adopting Thunder Client moves on the Kin Score 3

Thunder Client is an area vendor: providers adopt it to run part of their developer surface. This is the Kin Score checks its features can move for a provider that adopts it, what each one really earns, and what it earns nothing for.

api collectionscapability map4 features checked 2026-09-25 · rubric v0.22.0

Thunder Client is a developer’s tool, not a publishing surface, so it earns a provider almost nothing by being used. What it can do is export: a collection in Postman format can earn postman_present if the provider hosts and declares it, and the paid OpenAPI export can create a contract for a provider that had only requests. Its Git-synced collections are a real practice no check reads.

Contract Quality24.0 of 211 pts
Developer Ergonomics2.0 of 42 pts
CheckEarnsThrough
Publishes a machine-readable contractsaturated
Contract QualityPaid tier only, and only if the provider publishes the exported OpenAPI as its contract. A spec derived from saved requests carries what the requests carried — expect weak descriptions, schemas and error responses downstream.		 20.0 of 20 Export in Thunder Client, Postman and OpenAPI formats
Postman collection
Developer ErgonomicsExport the collection in Postman format, host it where the provider controls it and declare it as a Postman pointer. A native Thunder Client file does not satisfy the check.		 2.0 of 2 Export in Thunder Client, Postman and OpenAPI formats
Published example corpusconditional
Contract QualityOnly if the provider publishes the synced collection in a public repo and declares it as Examples; a set of runnable requests is an example corpus only if it covers real calls with real payloads.		 4.0 of 4 Git Sync
Across 8977 providers that publish a contract, adopting Thunder Client would move 8537. Median lift: composite +0.9 (90th percentile +1.0), agent readiness +0.0 (+0.0). Conditional rows excluded.
What Thunder Client ships that earns nothing (2)
  • Thunder Client CLI — The CLI runs Thunder Client collections; it is not a command-line client for the provider’s API.
  • Collections and environments — A native Thunder Client collection is not Postman-typed; only the Postman-format export is read.

A model, not a score. Adopting this vendor changes a provider's Kin Score only when the provider publishes the resulting artifacts on its own surface; nothing here writes a score, and no sponsorship or partnership can. The rating is not for sale → · Full vendor facets artifact

APIs 2

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

Thunder Client

Thunder Client is the flagship VS Code REST API client extension offering a lightweight GUI for sending HTTP requests, managing collections with environment variables, and runni...

Thunder Client CLI

The Thunder Client CLI (@thunderclient/cli) is a Node.js command-line tool for running Thunder Client requests, collections, and cURL commands from the terminal. It supports CI/...

GraphQL 1

GraphQL schemas published by this provider.

Thunder Client GraphQL API

Thunder Client is the flagship VS Code REST API client extension offering a lightweight GUI for sending HTTP requests, managing collections with environment variables, and runni...

GRAPHQL

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Thunder Client Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Thunder Client Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Thunder Client Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Thunder Client Context

14 classes · 27 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Thunder Client API Rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

Thunder Client Collection

7 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Thunder Client Environment

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

JSON Structure 1

JSON Structure definitions describing this provider's data shapes.

Thunder Client Collection Structure

0 properties

JSON STRUCTURE

Examples 2

Example request and response payloads for these APIs.

Thunder Client Collection Example

7 fields

EXAMPLE

Thunder Client Environment Example

5 fields

EXAMPLE

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Thunder Client Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS · DMARC

SECURITY

Resources

Documentation 3

Reference material describing how the API behaves

Documentation
Documentation
 JSONSchema
JSONSchema
 JSONSchema
JSONSchema

Design & Contract 3

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONStructure
JSONStructure
 JSONLDContext
JSONLDContext
 Vocabulary
Vocabulary

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

GitHub
GitHub
 VS Code Marketplace
VS Code Marketplace
 npm
npm

Access & Security 1

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

DomainSecurity
DomainSecurity

Operate 1

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

ChangeLog
ChangeLog

Commercial 1

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Pricing
Pricing

Company 2

The organization behind the API

LinkedIn
LinkedIn
 Website
Website

Other 1

Properties that don't map to a standard resource type

VendorFacets
VendorFacets

Source (apis.yml)

apis.yml Raw ↑ 
aid: thunder-client
name: Thunder Client
description: Thunder Client is a lightweight REST API client extension for Visual Studio Code created by Ranga Vadhineni,
  providing a clean interface for sending HTTP requests, managing collections, and testing APIs without leaving the editor.
  With nearly 7 million installs, it pioneered GUI-based API testing in VS Code with 100% local storage, scriptless testing,
  Git Sync for team collaboration, GraphQL support, and an advanced CLI for CI/CD integration. Thunder Client supports importing
  collections from Postman, Insomnia, Hoppscotch, and OpenAPI 3.0, and offers pre/post-request scripting and environment variables.
type: Index
deliveryModel:
  model: saas
  license_evidence:
    not_product:
    - thunderclient/thunder-client-support
  open_source: unknown
  commercial: true
  callable_host: false
  label: Hosted service · you call their endpoint
  confidence: low
  source:
  - pricing
  - repository-not-product
  generated: '2026-09-25'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: medium
  source:
  - plans
  generated: '2026-07-22'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/thunder-client.png
tags:
- API Client
- API Testing
- CI/CD
- CLI
- Collection
- GraphQL
- REST Client
- VS Code
tags_raw:
- API Client
- API Testing
- CI/CD
- CLI
- Collections
- GraphQL
- REST Client
- VS Code
url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client/refs/heads/main/apis.yml
created: '2026-03-16'
modified: '2026-05-03'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
apis:
- aid: thunder-client:thunder-client
  name: Thunder Client
  description: Thunder Client is the flagship VS Code REST API client extension offering a lightweight GUI for sending HTTP
    requests, managing collections with environment variables, and running scriptless tests. Features include Git Sync for
    team collaboration, GraphQL support, pre/post request scripting, collection import from Postman/Insomnia/Hoppscotch/OpenAPI,
    and an advanced CLI supporting CI/CD pipelines.
  humanURL: https://www.thunderclient.com
  tags:
  - API Client
  - API Testing
  - Collection
  - GraphQL
  - REST Client
  - VS Code
  tags_raw:
  - API Client
  - API Testing
  - Collections
  - GraphQL
  - REST Client
  - VS Code
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/get-started
  - type: GitHub
    url: https://github.com/thunderclient/thunder-client-support
  - type: VS Code Marketplace
    url: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.vscode-thunder-client
  - type: Pricing
    url: https://www.thunderclient.com/pricing
  - type: CLI Documentation
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli
  - type: Scripting API Reference
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/scripting/api
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/thunderclient/thunder-client-support/releases
  - type: npm
    url: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@thunderclient/cli
  - url: graphql/thunder-client-graphql.md
    type: GraphQL
  contact:
  - FN: Thunder Client Support
    url: https://github.com/thunderclient/thunder-client-support
  version: 2.40.10
- aid: thunder-client:thunder-client-cli
  name: Thunder Client CLI
  description: The Thunder Client CLI (@thunderclient/cli) is a Node.js command-line tool for running Thunder Client requests,
    collections, and cURL commands from the terminal. It supports CI/CD integration, parallel execution, and multiple report
    formats (CLI, CSV, HTML, JSON, XML, NUnit). Installed globally via npm (npm i -g @thunderclient/cli).
  humanURL: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli
  baseURL: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli
  tags:
  - API Testing
  - CI/CD
  - CLI
  - Collection
  - Node.js
  tags_raw:
  - API Testing
  - CI/CD
  - CLI
  - Collections
  - Node.js
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli
  - type: CLI Install
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli/install
  - type: Run Requests
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli/run-requests
  - type: Run Collection
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli/run-collection
  - type: cURL Commands
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli/curl
  - type: CI/CD Integration
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli/ci-cd
  - type: List Command
    url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/cli/list
  - type: npm
    url: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@thunderclient/cli
common:
- type: VendorFacets
  url: vendor-facets/thunder-client-vendor-facets.yml
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/thunder-client-domain-security.yml
- type: LinkedIn
  url: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thunderclient
- type: Website
  url: https://www.thunderclient.com
- type: Documentation
  url: https://docs.thunderclient.com/
- type: GitHub
  url: https://github.com/thunderclient/thunder-client-support
- type: VS Code Marketplace
  url: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=rangav.vscode-thunder-client
- type: Pricing
  url: https://www.thunderclient.com/pricing
- type: npm
  url: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@thunderclient/cli
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/thunderclient/thunder-client-support/releases
- type: JSONSchema
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client/refs/heads/main/json-schema/thunder-client-collection-schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client/refs/heads/main/json-schema/thunder-client-environment-schema.json
- type: JSONStructure
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client/refs/heads/main/json-structure/thunder-client-collection-structure.json
- type: JSONLDContext
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client/refs/heads/main/json-ld/thunder-client-context.jsonld
- type: Vocabulary
  url: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/api-evangelist/thunder-client/refs/heads/main/vocabulary/thunder-client-vocabulary.yml
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

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