head to head · open source
Bruno vs NSwag
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NSwag has 7,365 stars, 1,360 forks, 2,057 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 538% (47,022 vs 7,365 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; NSwag is written in C# under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, NSwag 18%. 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 | NSwag | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 NSwag if
- You want the NSwag feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and NSwag 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 NSwag
NSwag is an MIT licensed Swagger/OpenAPI 2.0 and 3.0 toolchain written in C for .NET, ASP.NET Core, and TypeScript developers who need to generate OpenAPI specifications from ASP.NET Web API controllers and generate C or TypeScript clients from those specifications.
read the full NSwag overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or NSwag more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and NSwag has 7,365. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and NSwag free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and NSwag under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and NSwag?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and NSwag in C#. 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 NSwag?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose NSwag if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.