head to head · open source
Bruno vs prest
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars, 2,890 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. prest has 4,618 stars, 322 forks, 153 open issues and last shipped today. Bruno leads on adoption by 918% (47,027 vs 4,618 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; prest is written in Go under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, prest 7%. prest 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 | prest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 prest if
- You want the prest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and prest 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 prest
pREST (PostgreSQL + REST) is a production ready, MIT licensed Go service that exposes an instant REST API and a read only Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint on top of any existing or new PostgreSQL database, built for teams that want CRUD, custom SQL routes, authentication and access control without hand writing a backend.
read the full prest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or prest more popular?
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars and prest has 4,618. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and prest free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and prest under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and prest?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and prest 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 prest?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,027 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose prest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.