head to head · open source
Bruno vs macai
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. macai has 938 stars, 76 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 5,016% (47,992 vs 938 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; macai is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, macai 8%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (api-client), 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 | macai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 938 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 76 |
| 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 macai if
- You want the macai feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and macai 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…
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About macai
macai macai (macOS AI) is a simple yet powerful native macOS AI chat client that supports most AI providers: ChatGPT, Claude, xAI (Grok), Google Gemini, Perplexity, Ollama, OpenRouter, and almost any OpenAI compatible APIs. Table of Contents Downloads Manual Homebrew Contributions Why macai Run with ChatGPT, Claude, xAI or Google Gemini Run with Ollama System requirements Project status Build from source iCloud Sync Configuration License Downloads Manual Download latest universal binary, notarized by Apple. Homebrew Install macai cask with homebrew: brew install cask macai Contributions Contributions are…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or macai more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and macai has 938. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and macai free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and macai under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and macai?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and macai in Swift. 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 macai?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose macai if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.