head to head · open source
Bruno vs resterm
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. resterm has 1,925 stars, 54 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 2,343% (47,022 vs 1,925 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; resterm is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, resterm 3%. resterm was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (api-client, api-testing, http-client, rest-api), 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 | resterm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 54 |
| 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 resterm if
- You want the resterm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and resterm 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 resterm
Resterm is a terminal API client for HTTP, GraphQL, and gRPC, with WebSocket and SSE support. It lives in the developer tools and API testing ecosystem, is written in Go, and is licensed under Apache 2.0. The project stores requests as plain text .http and .rest files, so users can edit, send, diff, review, and version control API work.
read the full resterm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or resterm more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and resterm has 1,925. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and resterm free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and resterm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and resterm?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and resterm 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 resterm?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose resterm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.