head to head · open source
Bruno vs elements
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. elements has 2,472 stars, 257 forks, 276 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 1,841% (47,992 vs 2,472 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; elements is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, elements 10%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (openapi, openapi3), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Bruno | elements | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 257 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Bruno if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick elements if
- You want the elements feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and elements fits your workflow better
About Bruno
Bruno Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs. English Українська Русский Türkçe Deutsch Français Português (BR) 한국어 বাংলা Español Italiano Română Polski 简体中文 正體中文 العربية 日本語 ქართული Nederlands فارسی Bruno is a new and innovative API client, aimed at revolutionizing the status quo represented by Postman and similar tools out there. Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem. We use a plain text markup language, Bru, to save information about API requests. You can use Git or any version control of your choice to collaborate over your API collections. Bruno is offline only. There…
read the full Bruno overview →
About elements
[ ][elements landing page] [![CircleCI][circle ci image]][circle ci] [![NPM Downloads][circle ci image]][npm] [ ][stoplight forest] Beautiful API documentation powered by OpenAPI and Markdown. Use these UI components to create API reference documentation, or more complete documentation with Markdown articles covering tutorials, how to guides, etc. Available as React Components, or Web Components, you can use Elements all together to build beautiful three column "Stripe esque" documentation, or stacked documentation thats easier for integrating into existing Content Management Systems with their own navigation…
read the full elements overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or elements more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and elements has 2,472. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and elements free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and elements under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and elements?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and elements in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Bruno or elements?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose elements if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.