head to head · open source
Bruno vs hey-api
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hey-api has 5,416 stars, 434 forks, 630 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 768% (47,022 vs 5,416 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; hey-api is written in TypeScript under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, hey-api 8%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (api-client, developer-tools, 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 | hey-api | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 434 |
| 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 hey-api if
- You want the hey-api feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and hey-api 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 hey-api
Hey API is an open source ecosystem for turning API specifications into production ready code. It is distributed as a monorepo containing all of the project's open source packages, with the two primary generators being openapi ts for TypeScript and openapi python for Python. The TypeScript generator ships with more than twenty plugins covering SDKs, Zod schemas, and TanStack Query hooks, while the Python generator produces SDKs and Pydantic models. A supporting library, spec types , provides TypeScript definitions for OpenAPI and JSON Schema specifications with complete inline documentation. The project lives in …
read the full hey-api overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or hey-api more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and hey-api has 5,416. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and hey-api free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and hey-api under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and hey-api?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and hey-api 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 hey-api?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hey-api if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.