head to head · open source
Bruno vs goa
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goa has 6,101 stars, 583 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 671% (47,022 vs 6,101 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; goa is written in Go under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, goa 10%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (openapi), 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 | goa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 583 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Bruno if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick goa if
- You want the goa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and goa fits your workflow better
About Bruno
Bruno is a lightweight, open source API client and IDE for exploring and testing APIs, built for developers and teams who want their request collections stored as plain text in a folder on their own filesystem rather than in a vendor's cloud.
read the full Bruno overview →
About goa
Goa is a design first framework for building APIs and microservices in Go. It lives in the Go ecosystem and is distributed under the MIT license, with a repository that has been active for roughly twelve years and currently carries about 6,100 stars, 583 forks, and 38 open issues. Instead of writing transport and boilerplate code by hand, a developer expresses the intent of an API in a type safe domain specific language, and Goa generates the server interfaces, client packages, transport adapters, and documentation from that single design. The project describes itself as generating between 30 and 50 percent of a …
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or goa more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and goa has 6,101. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and goa free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and goa under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and goa?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and goa in Go. 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 goa?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose goa if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.