head to head · open source
Bruno vs mcpo
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars, 2,890 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mcpo has 4,378 stars, 495 forks, 56 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 974% (47,027 vs 4,378 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; mcpo is written in Python under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, mcpo 11%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | mcpo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-05-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 495 |
| 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 mcpo if
- You want the mcpo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and mcpo 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 mcpo
mcpo is a Python proxy server that exposes any Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool as an OpenAPI compatible HTTP server, built for developers and teams who need MCP tools to work with LLM agents, SDKs and UIs that speak standard OpenAPI.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or mcpo more popular?
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars and mcpo has 4,378. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and mcpo free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and mcpo under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and mcpo?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and mcpo in Python. 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 mcpo?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,027 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mcpo if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.