head to head · open source
Bruno vs kgateway
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kgateway has 5,688 stars, 810 forks, 231 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 727% (47,022 vs 5,688 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; kgateway is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, kgateway 14%. kgateway 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 | kgateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 810 |
| 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 kgateway if
- You want the kgateway 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 kgateway 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 kgateway
kgateway is an Apache 2.0, Go based control plane that implements the Kubernetes Gateway API for Envoy, giving platform and API teams a cloud native API gateway for microservices, serverless functions and legacy backends across any cloud or environment.
read the full kgateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or kgateway more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and kgateway has 5,688. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and kgateway free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and kgateway under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and kgateway?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and kgateway 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 kgateway?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kgateway if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.