head to head · open source
Bruno vs php-vcr
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. php-vcr has 1,220 stars, 214 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 3,834% (47,992 vs 1,220 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; php-vcr is written in PHP under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, php-vcr 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 (api-testing), 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 | php-vcr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 214 |
| 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 php-vcr if
- You want the php-vcr feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and php-vcr 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…
read the full Bruno overview →
About php-vcr
This is a port of the VCR Ruby library to PHP. Record your test suite's HTTP interactions and replay them during future test runs for fast, deterministic, accurate tests. Full documentation lives at php vcr.github.io/php vcr — or browse the raw Markdown in docs/ . Disclaimer: Doing this in PHP is not as easy as in programming languages which support monkey patching (I'm looking at you, Ruby) Features Automatically records and replays your HTTP(s) interactions with minimal setup/configuration code. Supports common http functions and extensions — see Supported HTTP libraries below The same request can receive…
read the full php-vcr overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or php-vcr more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and php-vcr has 1,220. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and php-vcr free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and php-vcr under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and php-vcr?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and php-vcr in PHP. 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 php-vcr?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose php-vcr if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.