head to head · open source
Bruno vs pythagora
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pythagora has 1,823 stars, 116 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 2,479% (47,022 vs 1,823 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; pythagora is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, pythagora 6%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (api-testing, developer-tools), 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 | pythagora | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-06-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 116 |
| 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 pythagora if
- You want the pythagora 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 pythagora 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 pythagora
Pythagora is a JavaScript tool for generating automated tests for Node.js applications with GPT 4. It lives in the Node.js testing ecosystem and aims to create unit tests without developers writing the test code by hand. The project works by finding an exported function, collecting related functions through AST parsing, and sending that context to a server that produces the tests. The README also says the repository is deprecated and that work has moved to GPT Pilot.
read the full pythagora overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or pythagora more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and pythagora has 1,823. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and pythagora free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and pythagora under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and pythagora?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and pythagora 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 pythagora?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pythagora if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.