head to head · open source
Bruno vs redoc
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. redoc has 25,913 stars, 2,395 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 81% (47,022 vs 25,913 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; redoc is written in TypeScript under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, redoc 9%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (openapi, openapi3), 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 | redoc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 redoc if
- You want the redoc feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and redoc 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 redoc
Redoc is an open source tool for generating API reference documentation from OpenAPI definitions, formerly known as Swagger. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, ships under the MIT license, and is published on npm as the redoc package. By default it renders a responsive three panel layout: a left panel holding the search bar and navigation menu, a central panel holding the documentation itself, and a right panel showing request and response examples.
read the full redoc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or redoc more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and redoc has 25,913. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and redoc free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and redoc under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and redoc?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and redoc in TypeScript. 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 redoc?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose redoc if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.