head to head · open source
Bruno vs higress
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. higress has 9,695 stars, 1,379 forks, 1,114 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 395% (47,992 vs 9,695 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; higress is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, higress 14%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | higress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 9.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 higress if
- You want the higress feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and higress 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 higress
AI Gateway AI Native API Gateway Official Site Docs Blog Roadmap MCP Server QuickStart Developer Guide Wasm Plugin Hub English 中文 日本語 What is Higress? Higress is a cloud native API gateway based on Istio and Envoy, which can be extended with Wasm plugins written in Go/Rust/JS. It provides dozens of ready to use general purpose plugins and an out of the box console (try the demo here). Core Use Cases Higress's AI gateway capabilities support all mainstream model providers both domestic and international. It also supports hosting MCP (Model Context Protocol) Servers through its plugin mechanism, enabling AI Agents…
read the full higress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or higress more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and higress has 9,695. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and higress free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and higress under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and higress?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and higress 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 higress?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose higress if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.