Cartero is a graphical HTTP client that can be used as a developer tool to test web APIs and perform all kind of HTTP requests to web servers. It is compatible with any REST, SOAP or XML-RPC API and it supports multiple request methods as well as attaching body payloads to compatible requests.

Features:

• Loads and saves to plain Git-friendly TOML files, so that you can own your data.
• Customization and modification of the request headers and body payloads.
• Variable binding for API keys and other secret information.

Motivation:

This project exists because there aren't many native graphical HTTP testing applications / graphical alternatives to cURL that are fully free software, and I think the world has had enough of Electron / non-native applications that are anonymously accesible until one day you are forced to create an account and log in to use just to make some investor happy with their numbers or to chug some unwanted artificial intelligence at users.

Download

Get it from Flathub

Download for your OS

Windows	macOS	AppImage
x64, installer x64, portable	Apple Sillicon Intel 64-bit	amd64

Get it from your package manager

Note: distributions in package managers are maintained by the community. While I am open to provide help and communication with maintainers of those ports, outdated versions and other packaging issues should be reported first to the package manager or to the package maintainer, not upstream.

You can also get it from Homebrew by using the tap:

brew tap SoloAntonio/cartero
brew install --cask cartero

Additional instructions in the docs.

If you use NixOS you can also add the flake. Check the instructions in the docs as well.

Building

Currently, to build the application you'll have to make sure that the required libraries are installed on your system.

• glib >= 2.72
• gtk >= 4.14
• gtksourceview >= 5.4
• libadwaita >= 1.5
• openssl >= 1.0

For a successful build, will also need the following packages installed in your system: meson, ninja, rust and gettext.

Then use the following commands to build and install the application

meson setup build
ninja -C build
ninja -C build install

To avoid installing system-wide the application, you can use a prefix:

meson setup build --prefix=/usr
ninja -C build
ninja -C build install

Hacking and contributing

If you plan on contributing to the project, use the development profile. It will also configure a Git hook so that the source code is checked prior to authoring a Git commit. The hook runs cargo fmt to assert that the code is formatted. Read hooks/pre-commit.hook to inspect what the script does.

meson setup build -Dprofile=development

If you want to hack the source code and make your own changes to Cartero, you can do it as long as you know enough Rust and enough about GTK and the rest of the libraries it uses. Check out the hacking instructions. It provides instructions useful for those who want to compile, test and run the application, specifically how to compile the resource bundles and run the application.

If you want to share your changes with the world, you could send a pull request to add the code to Cartero so that anyone can benefit from it. Information on how to contribute has moved to the website.

Other ways to contribute to Cartero also include reporting bugs, sending feedback, talking about Cartero to other people to make the project more popular, and sending translations. We are using Weblate to coordinate and translate comfortably this project using a web interface. Make an account and start proposing strings and they will be added to the application. That will also entitle you as a contributor!

Licenses

Cartero is published under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.

Copyright 2024-2025 the Cartero authors

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

The Cartero icon is published under the a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Credits and acknowledgments

Cartero is maintained by Dani Rodríguez.

Big shoutout to the contributors who have sent patches or translations! Also, Christian suggested Cartero as the name for the application and I liked it enough to call it like so, therefore shoutout to Christian as well!