head to head · open source
Bruno vs octelium
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. octelium has 4,056 stars, 153 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 1,059% (47,022 vs 4,056 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; octelium is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, octelium 4%. Bruno 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 | octelium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.1K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 153 |
| 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 octelium if
- You want the octelium feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and octelium 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 octelium
Octelium is a free and open source self hosted zero trust secure access platform written in Go under the AGPL 3.0 license. It can operate as a remote access VPN, a ZTNA platform, an ngrok or Cloudflare Tunnel alternative, an API gateway, an AI or LLM gateway, a PaaS like deployment platform, a Kubernetes gateway or ingress, and a homelab infrastructure.
read the full octelium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or octelium more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and octelium has 4,056. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and octelium free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and octelium under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and octelium?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and octelium 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 octelium?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose octelium if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.