Sendpad
Point it at your existing .http files. Everything works.
VS Code extension Final testing — not yet on the Marketplace levelbrook.sendpad v1.0.0
Status — Sendpad 1.0.0
Built, tested and packaged as a .vsix. It is not published to the VS Code Marketplace or Open VSX yet — the publisher account is the last step. There is nothing to install today.
The purchase links on this page are live, so you can buy today and activate the moment the extension is published. If you would rather wait, mail team@levelbrook.com and we will tell you when it ships.
Point it at your existing files. Everything works.
Sendpad reads the same .http and .rest files you already have.
No import step, no conversion, no workspace-specific format, no account.
@baseUrl = https://api.example.com
### Log in
# @name login
POST {{baseUrl}}/auth/login
Content-Type: application/json
{ "user": "demo", "pass": "demo" }
### Use the token from the response above
GET {{baseUrl}}/me
Authorization: Bearer {{login.response.body.$.token}}Why this exists
The .http client most VS Code developers use has
7.5 million installs and a 4.91★
rating, and it has been unmaintained since 2022. The best-known successor took a
2.39★ rating — the worst in our whole survey of the
category — for paywalling features that used to be free. Its users' own word for it
was “rug pull”.
Sendpad exists because that file format deserves a maintained client that does not do either of those things.
Free, forever
- Full
.http/.restcompatibility — every method including WebDAV verbs, headers, bodies,###separators,# @namehandles, file variables, prompt variables and environments. - Multi-line URLs, folded headers,
< ./filebodies,<@ ./filewith variable interpolation, and system variables such as{{$guid}},{{$timestamp -1 d}}and{{$randomInt 1 100}}. - Request chaining that works properly — reference an earlier response body, header or status by name.
- Editor integration — a real TextMate grammar with embedded JSON, CodeLens, completion and a document outline.
- A real response panel — status, size and a timing breakdown (DNS / TCP / TLS / first byte).
- Redirects with correct 301/302/303/307/308 method semantics, a cookie jar, proxies and client certificates.
- Copy as cURL and code generation for 13 targets.
- Save the response to a file, or open the full response in an editor.
https://localhost actually works
Self-signed certificates on a local dev server are the single most reported failure of the incumbent. Sendpad handles them, per host, without asking you to disable TLS verification globally.
One deliberate divergence, documented rather than hidden
Comment lines are stripped from the metadata and header region only; request
bodies pass through byte for byte. The incumbent strips # and //
lines from bodies too, which silently mangles any body that is a shell script, YAML,
Markdown or JSONC. A ### at the start of a line still ends a request.
Pro
| Feature | Free | Pro |
|---|---|---|
.http / .rest files, all verbs, all variables | Yes | Yes |
Request chaining, environments, .env | Yes | Yes |
| Syntax highlighting, CodeLens, completion, outline | Yes | Yes |
| Cookie jar, redirects, proxies, client certificates | Yes | Yes |
| Self-signed / localhost HTTPS | Yes | Yes |
| Copy as cURL, 13-language code generation | Yes | Yes |
| Save response, open full response | Yes | Yes |
Test assertions — > {% client.test(…) %} | — | Yes |
| Suite runner — run a file or a whole folder | — | Yes |
| JUnit XML export for CI | — | Yes |
OpenAPI / Swagger import to a ready-to-run .http file | — | Yes |
| cURL import, Postman import and export | — | Yes |
Secret storage — {{$secret NAME}} in your OS keychain | — | Yes |
Every row above the divider stays free forever. The scripting API for assertions is deliberately the IntelliJ HTTP Client one, so files written for IntelliJ run here unchanged.
Free
$0 · permanent
Not a trial. Not a countdown. The free tier listed above never moves behind a paywall — that is the whole point of the pledge.
Read the pledgePro — lifetime
$49 once
- Every Pro feature, on every machine you own
- One year of updates included; the version you bought keeps working forever
- No account and no email address required to use it
Pro — monthly
$6 / month
- The same Pro feature set
- Cancel at any time from the Stripe receipt
A 14-day trial starts the first time you use a Pro feature. No account, no email address, no card and no request to any server. Payment is handled by Stripe; we never see your card details. Your entitlement is an Ed25519-signed token that is verified offline, so Pro keeps working when you do not have a network.
Already bought it and lost the key? Recover your licence key.
No telemetry. None.
Sendpad makes exactly the HTTP requests you write in your files, plus one more if — and only if — you personally enter a Pro licence key. There is no analytics, no crash reporting and no usage ping, so there is no setting to turn any of it off.
What is not in 1.0
Named here rather than discovered later. GraphQL schema introspection and field
completion are not implemented — GraphQL requests work fully, but
there is no schema-aware completion. gRPC, WebSocket and SSE request types are not
implemented. Neither is advertised anywhere in the product. Azure AD
({{$aadToken}}) is unsupported; it falls through as an unresolved variable
rather than failing silently. These are the 1.1 candidates.