# About

> What Porticol is, where the name comes from, and who makes it.

Canonical: https://porticol.app/about
Last updated: 2026-10-27

Porticol is a native API client for macOS, Windows and Linux, and a Postman alternative that AI coding agents can drive over MCP.

## In short

Porticol is a desktop app for working through an API: collections, environments, a request editor and a response viewer, all on your computer. It imports Postman collections and their `pm` scripts, keeps collections as readable files in Git, and serves the same workspace to a coding agent over MCP.

The same collections run from `porticol-cli` in CI, and a team can sync them through Porticol Cloud or a server it runs itself.

## The name

Porticol is one word, and not a misspelling. It is not *portico*, the word for a porch, and not *protocol*, the networking term. A search engine that offers either has not met the name before; this page and the documentation are the product.

## What it does

- A native app for macOS, Windows and Linux: 0.24 s to its first window and 114 MB at idle, measured on Apple M4 Pro, macOS 26.4, arm64.
- Works offline; collections, environments and history stay on your computer.
- Imports Postman collections and environments, Insomnia, Bruno, Thunder Client, Hoppscotch, .http files, OpenAPI 3, HAR and cURL.
- Keeps collections as files in Git, and lints and diffs OpenAPI documents.
- Serves the workspace to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and VS Code over MCP, with secret values masked.
- Runs the same collections, flows and performance runs in CI with porticol-cli.
- Free for one seat; paid plans from $9 a seat a month.

## How it is made

It is written in Rust, with an interface in React that the system's own web view draws instead of a bundled browser. The desktop app keeps your work in one SQLite file; the server runs on PostgreSQL.

## Who makes it

Porticol is built and run by one person. There is no company behind it: support, security reports and privacy requests reach the same person, and a person answers.

## Where to find it

- [Documentation](https://porticol.app/docs/)
- [Benchmarks](https://porticol.app/benchmarks)
- [Pricing](https://porticol.app/pricing)
- [Comparisons](https://porticol.app/compare/)
- [Homebrew tap](https://github.com/pavanmanishd/homebrew-porticol)
- [MCP Registry](https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io)
- [Contact](https://porticol.app/contact)

## Start with one collection

Free for one seat, on macOS, Windows and Linux.