Requestly

Overview

Requestly turned a developer's workaround into a durable testing tool. Sachin Jain first built a Chrome extension to redirect JavaScript files, then he and Sagar Soni expanded it into an open-source system for intercepting, modifying, mocking, and recording HTTP traffic across browsers and desktop apps. By 2024, Requestly said it was used by more than 250,000 developers in 14,000 organizations.^[1]

This is an acquisition story, not a failure story. Requestly proved strong individual-developer demand, but its own evolution kept pulling it from a focused browser utility toward team collaboration, API testing, and enterprise controls. That placed it beside better-capitalized testing suites. BrowserStack acquired the company in May 2025 for an undisclosed amount and kept the product open source and independently available.^[2]

Founding Story

Requestly began with a specific irritation. In 2014, Jain was debugging an intermittent flash-of-unstyled-content problem in Adobe Target. He needed to serve a local JavaScript file in place of the production asset, so he built a Chrome extension and shared it with his team. TechCrunch described Jain as a decade-long veteran of Google, Adobe, and Grofers, and Soni as a repeat builder of web, mobile, and desktop products.^[3][12]

The first product did one narrow job: redirect JavaScript. Requestly's later product history records a sequence of expansions, from redirects and header modification to interception of all HTTP requests, a lightweight debugging proxy, team collaboration, browser and mobile interception, API mocking, and enterprise readiness.^[4] Soni, then pursuing a master's degree, contacted Jain after discovering the extension; YC says they met at a coworking space before both committed full-time. The company joined Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch after the utility already had real usage. YC now describes it as an “Open-Source Postman alternative” with more than 200,000 active installs.^[5]

Jain later stated the origin plainly: “Charles & Fiddler were hard to set up so I built a simple Chrome extension to do this.”^[6] In the 2022 Hacker News launch, he described the early distribution as “completely organic” and said the side project had crossed 40,000 monthly active users before the founders went full-time.^[12] Those comments capture the original wedge: remove proxy configuration from a task developers performed every day.

Timeline

• 2014: Jain built the first JavaScript-redirection extension while debugging Adobe Target.^[12]
• 2019: The company published paid tiers ranging from a free plan to a $23-per-member monthly Professional plan.^[7]
• 2022: Requestly entered Y Combinator's Winter 2022 batch after reporting more than 40,000 monthly active users.^[5][12]
• 2024: Requestly reported more than 250,000 developers across 14,000 organizations and offered a browser extension plus desktop clients.^[1]
• May 6, 2025: BrowserStack announced its acquisition of Requestly; the price was not disclosed.^[2]
• 2026: The open-source repository described 300,000-plus developers, 11,000-plus companies, and support for browser, desktop, and mobile traffic.^[8]

What They Built

Requestly let a developer change network behavior without changing the application or standing up a conventional proxy. A user could install the browser extension, define a rule, match a URL, and redirect it, modify headers, replace request or response bodies, inject scripts, block calls, or introduce mock responses. A frontend engineer could therefore continue work before a backend endpoint existed, reproduce an error response, or load a local script on a production page.

The product grew beyond rules. SessionBook recorded network traffic and supported converting captured calls into mocks. The API client handled REST and GraphQL requests, collections, environments, pre- and post-request scripts, and collection runs. A desktop client extended interception beyond one browser to applications and devices. Teams gained shared workspaces and configuration sharing.^[1]

Its distinction was proximity to the developer's actual workflow. Requestly's Chrome Web Store listing says the extension does not configure a browser proxy, avoiding common VPN conflicts and latency. The current listing has 300,000 users and a 4.5 rating from roughly 1,700 ratings.^[9] The code is open source, allowing security review and self-hosting, while paid collaboration and enterprise features created a commercial layer.^[10]