Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to HTTP:COLON – A quick HTTP header/directive inspector and reference

Hi HN -- I built HTTP:COLON, a small, open-source web tool for quickly checking a site’s HTTP response headers and learning what they mean as you go. Link: https://httpcolon.dev/ What it does - Enter a URL and fetch its response headers - Groups common headers into handy buckets (cache, content, security) - Includes short docs/tooltips for headers and directives so you can look things up while debugging. I find hovering on highlighted headers quite useful! Supports different HTTP methods (GET/POST/PUT/DELETE) Deep links - You can link directly to a host,…

HTTP:COLON is an open-source web tool that inspects HTTP response headers from any URL and explains what they mean. Users enter a domain, select an HTTP method, and see headers organized by category—cache, content, and… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1
ut – Rust based CLI utilities for devs and IT▲170
Hey HN, I find myself reaching for tools like it-tools.tech or other random sites every now and then during development or debugging. So, I built a toolkit with a sane and simple CLI interface for most of those tools. For the curious and lazy, at the moment, ut has tools for, - Encoding: base64 (encode, decode), url (encode, decode) - Hashing: md5, sha1, sha224, sha256, sha384, sha512 - Data Generation: uuid (v1, v3, v4, v5), token, lorem, random - Text Processing: case (lower, upper, camel, title, constant, header, sentence, snake), pretty-print, diff - Development Tools: calc, json…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
2
I made tool that let's you see everything about any website▲411
Yes, it's open source: https://github.com/lissy93/web-check :) Why I'm building this? There are a lot of tools out there for discovering meta and security data relating to a website, IP or server. But currently, there isn't anything that does everything, all in one place and without a paywall/ user sign up. It's still a WIP, and I'm working on a new version, with some more comprehensive checks, so any feedback would be much appreciated :)
2024 · v1.web-check.xyz · its alternatives →
3
Site SEO Checker▲85
Get your site: (colon) in google in 1 second with no hassle
2021 · chromewebstore.google.com · its alternatives →
4
HTTP Mock – Intercept, debug and mock HTTP(S) with zero setup▲341
Beautiful, cross-platform & open-source tools for debugging, testing and building with HTTP(S), on Windows, Linux & Mac.
2019 · httptoolkit.tech · its alternatives →
5
Lint for HTTP▲138
Validator for HTTP. Contribute to vfaronov/httpolice development by creating an account on GitHub.
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
6
ServBay▲399
Hello HN, I’m one of the creators of ServBay. I built this because I got tired of the cognitive load required just to start coding. On my Mac, it was a fragile mix of Homebrew services and asdf conflicts. On Windows, managing PATH variables and fighting with Docker Desktop's resource usage was equally frustrating. I missed the simplicity of the MAMP/XAMPP era, but I needed to support modern stacks (Go, Rust, Node, etc.). What it is: ServBay is a native local development environment for both macOS and Windows. It is not a wrapper around Docker or VMs. It bundles everything you need into…
2024 · servbay.com · its alternatives →
7
Httpdbg – A tool to trace the HTTP requests sent by your Python code▲200
Hi, I created httpdbg, a tool for Python developers to easily debug HTTP(S) client requests in Python programs. I developed it because I needed a tool that could help me trace the HTTP requests sent by my tests back to the corresponding methods in our API client. The goal of this tool is to simplify the debugging process, so I designed it to be as simple as possible. It requires no external dependencies, no setup, no superuser privileges, and no code modifications. I'm sharing it with you today because I use it regularly, and it seems like others have found it useful too—so it might be…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
8
HTML-to-Markdown – convert entire websites to Markdown with Golang/CLI▲360
Hey HN! I originally built “html-to-markdown” back in 2018 (while still in high school) to handle complex HTML conversions where other libraries struggled. Now, I’ve released v2 — a complete rewrite designed to handle even more edge cases. It supports entire websites with a high accuracy. Example use: I’ve used it in my RSS reader to strip HTML down to clean Markdown, similar to the "Reader Mode" in your Browser. It can be used as a Golang package or as an CLI. Give it a try & tell me what edge cases you encounter!
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
9
I built a web framework in C▲420
a lightweight web framework in c. Contribute to ashtonjamesd/lavandula development by creating an account on GitHub.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
10
Hurl – Run and test HTTP requests with plain text, curl and Rust▲223
Hurl, run and test HTTP requests with plain text and curl. Hurl can run fast automated integration tests.
2021 · hurl.dev · its alternatives →
11
An API that takes a URL and returns a file with browser screenshots▲208
A self-hosted API that takes a URL and returns a file with browser screenshots. - goodreasonai/ScrapeServ
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
12
ScrapeNinja▲249
Swiss army knife for high-performance web scraping
2023 · scrapeninja.net · its alternatives →
13IM
I made an open-source Bitly alternative▲255
2022 · dub.sh · its alternatives →
14
Endpoints.dev – Pastebin for HTTP Requests▲201
Endpoints.dev is for sale on Spaceship. Secure checkout and quick transfer. See all purchase options. No hidden fees.
2020 · endpoints.dev · its alternatives →
15
My shell script for HTTP/HTTPS troubleshooting and profiling▲155
My simple Swiss Army knife for http/https troubleshooting and profiling. - trimstray/htrace.sh
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
16
HTTP Documentation▲75
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) explained, with examples
2023 · http.dev · its alternatives →
17
Your Raw HTTP Response -> URL▲10
I wanted a tool to be able to effortlessly check out how browsers (and other clients) react to different headers (and anomalies) in the HTTP response, so I made it. Source: https://github.com/ukusormus/response-machine
2024 · response.ee · its alternatives →
18
The HTTP Garden – A Parser Vulnerability Research Tool▲75
I wrote this tool during an internship at Narf Industries in 2023. It's a REPL that allows for quickly developing, testing, and fuzzing for HTTP request smuggling attack payloads. I started the internship having never worked with web servers, and have now found over 100 HTTP implementation bugs. I attribute this mostly to the ease of experimentation in the Garden. REPL-oriented fuzzing is just a really good interface for finding parsing bugs. It's pretty neat to able to run a differential fuzzer, categorize and display all the discovered discrepancies, then let a human pick through them and…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
19
Parse no-protocol URL, no-domain URI and email addresses etc from text▲74
Extract and decompose (fuzzy) URLs (including emails, which are conceptually a part of URLs) in texts with Area-Pattern-based modularity - patternhelloworld/url-knife
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
20
ParseHub – Extract data from dynamic websites▲143
2014 · parsehub.com · its alternatives →
21
Browser extension to read HN comments for any url, in ClojureScript▲69
A browser extension that displays Hacker News comments for the current webpage - jdormit/looped-in
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
22
A Fast HTTP Request CLI Powered by HTTL▲53
First HTTP programming language
2025 · httl.dev · its alternatives →
23IW
I wrote an HN bot to suggest HTTPS url when people post HTTP URLs▲17
It's inspired by this comment I made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26599746. I actually saw several comments with HTTP URL posted, and that was the only one I bothered to comment on. So I thought that this is something better suited for bots than human. I hacked this together over yesterday and today: https://github.com/fishy/https-bot. Basically it uses the Firebase API (https://github.com/HackerNews/API) to find comments with HTTP URLs in them, try the HTTPS version, compare the contents, post back a comment if the contents are…
2021 · its alternatives →
24
Browser-based XSS scanner▲57
This is a simple single-file python program that can find basic XSS (cross-site scripting) vulnerabilities in a target url. Most XSS discovery tools use a payload refelection strategy in which payloads are injected in url parameters and the GET response is inspected for places where the payload content is reflected. This is a very low precision XSS detection strategy because most reflection does not support execution. This program uses a different approach, and instead opens the target url in a browser, tests alert(...) payloads directly in the browser context, and listens for an alert being…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →