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30 days ago

# Volt a Terminal-native HTTP client that's also an insanely fast load tester

Hey HN! First post on here, I'm Owen, a CS student at UBC, and I built Volt because I was tired of context-switching between Postman for API testing and separate tools for load testing.

## What is Volt?

Volt is a CLI-first HTTP client written in Go that basically offers the features of Postman with the performance of a load-testing tool. Think "Postman meets Apache Bench" but actually insanely fast (beating other Go load testers like hey by almost 4x).

Also, the UX improvements are legit with being able to instantly open the service from anywhere and submit a request within 2 keystrokes, using vim keybindings.

## Why I built it

It made no sense to me why I should be switching between... - Postman for testing APIs during development - Apache Bench/wrk for basic load testing - More complex tools when I needed serious performance testing

I wanted one tool that could handle my entire HTTP testing workflow in the place I already develop my code: the terminal.

## Performance

Volt achieves *213,000 requests/second* on standard hardware in a local environment.

When comparing to live API endpoints with alternatives, Volt is 3.9x faster than hey as just a starter...

## Key Features

*Terminal-native workflow:* - Save and organize requests in collections with request autocompletion based on your previous patterns - Beautiful terminal UI with syntax highlighting

*Dual-mode operation:* - Single request mode: Test APIs like Postman - Load test mode: Stress test with configurable concurrency, duration, and rate limiting

*Developer experience:* - Request history - Response inspection with JSON/XML formatting - Custom headers, auth methods, body types

## Why terminal-native matters

1. *Speed*: No GUI overhead, instant startup 2. *Scriptable*: Easy to integrate into CI/CD pipelines 3. *Reproducible*: Requests saved as code, not binary blobs 4. *SSH-friendly*: Works perfectly on remote servers

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The project is open source and I'd love your feedback! Whether you're looking for a faster Postman alternative or a load testing tool that doesn't bottleneck before your API does, give Volt a try.

Happy to answer any questions about the architecture, benchmarking methodology, or roadmap!

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