head to head · open source
Bruno vs hey-api
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hey-api has 5,551 stars, 453 forks, 630 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 765% (47,992 vs 5,551 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 | ★ 48K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 453 |
| 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 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 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 hey-api
Hey API "OpenAPI codegen that just works." — Guillermo Rauch, CEO of Vercel Manual • Issues • Contribute About Hey API is an ecosystem for turning API specifications into production ready code. It's trusted by thousands of companies – from YC startups to Fortune 500 enterprises – and powers products used by millions worldwide. This is the monorepo containing all open source Hey API packages. For package specific documentation and quick start guides, see the individual repositories below. Packages Package Description openapi ts TypeScript code generator with 20+ plugins for SDKs, Zod schemas, TanStack Query…
read the full hey-api overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or hey-api more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and hey-api has 5,551. 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 (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hey-api if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.