head to head · open source
Bruno vs macai
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. macai has 931 stars, 77 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 4,951% (47,022 vs 931 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Bruno | macai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 931 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 77 |
| 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 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 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 macai
macai is an all in one native macOS AI chat application that connects to virtually any AI provider — ChatGPT, Claude, xAI (Grok), Google Gemini, Perplexity, Ollama, OpenRouter, and almost any OpenAI compatible API — and it is built for people on macOS 14.0 or later who want one app instead of a different client per provider.
read the full macai overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More API Development & Testing projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the API Development & Testing field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or macai more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and macai has 931. 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 (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose macai if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.