thunder-client-export

Get your Thunder Client collections back — as portable .http files.

npx thunder-client-export

That's it. No install, no account, no subscription.

Why this exists

Thunder Client moved its features behind a paywall, and for a lot of people that included exporting their own collections. Requests they had written months earlier were suddenly locked behind a subscription.

But Thunder Client never took that data away. It stores every collection, request and environment as plain JSON on your own disk — in your editor's storage folder, or a thunder-tests folder inside your project. The paywall gates the export button, not the files.

This tool reads those files and converts them into .http files that any editor can run and any tool can read.

What you get

### Login - User
# @name login-user
POST {{url}}/auth/login
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "email": "[email protected]",
  "password": "hunter2"
}

• One file per collection, folders preserved as section headers
• Request names, headers, bodies, and auth carried across
• {{variables}} intact — Thunder Client already used the same syntax
• Environments exported to http-client.env.json
• Orphaned requests rescued — if a collection was deleted, its requests are still recovered into ungrouped-requests.http
• Verified on the way out — every generated file is reparsed before the tool reports success, so a silent partial export can't happen

Tested against real collections, including a 114-request project: 114 exported, zero lost.

Usage

# Export into ./thunder-export
npx thunder-client-export

# Choose the output folder
npx thunder-client-export --out ./api

# See which Thunder Client folders were found
npx thunder-client-export --list

# Point at a specific folder
npx thunder-client-export --store "C:\path\to\thunder-tests"

Where it looks:

| Platform | Location | | --- | --- | | Windows | %APPDATA%\<Editor>\User\globalStorage\rangav.vscode-thunder-client | | macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/<Editor>/User/globalStorage/rangav.vscode-thunder-client | | Linux | ~/.config/<Editor>/User/globalStorage/rangav.vscode-thunder-client | | Any | thunder-tests/, .thunder-client/, thunder/ in the current folder |

<Editor> covers VS Code, VS Code Insiders, Cursor, Windsurf and VSCodium.

Your data stays yours

• Reads Thunder Client's files, never writes to or deletes them
• Writes .http files to a folder you choose
• Nothing is uploaded. No network calls, no telemetry, no account
• Zero runtime dependencies

Then what?

Open the .http files in VS Code and run them with any REST client extension — they use the standard format understood by REST Client, IntelliJ HTTP Client, and others. Because they're plain text, they also diff, merge and live in git like the rest of your code.

Programmatic use

import { findThunderStores, readThunderStore, convertThunderClient }
  from "thunder-client-export";

const [store] = findThunderStores([process.cwd()]);
const result = convertThunderClient(readThunderStore(store.dir));
console.log(result.files, result.stats);

Not affiliated

An independent tool, not affiliated with or endorsed by Thunder Client or its authors. It reads only files already present on your own machine.

MIT licensed. Issues and pull requests welcome.