head to head · open source
Bruno vs platformatic
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars, 2,890 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. platformatic has 2,041 stars, 203 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 2,204% (47,027 vs 2,041 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; platformatic is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, platformatic 10%. platformatic 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 | platformatic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 203 |
| 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 platformatic if
- You want the platformatic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and platformatic 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 platformatic
Platformatic is an Apache 2.0 open source monorepo whose flagship runtime, Watt, is a Node.js application server that takes any Node.js application written in any framework and runs it as a worker thread so teams can ship faster and scale in containerized environments.
read the full platformatic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or platformatic more popular?
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars and platformatic has 2,041. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and platformatic free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and platformatic under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and platformatic?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and platformatic in JavaScript. 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 platformatic?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,027 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose platformatic if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.