head to head · open source
Bruno vs resterm
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. resterm has 1,998 stars, 60 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 2,302% (47,992 vs 1,998 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%. Bruno 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, 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 | resterm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 60 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Bruno if
- You weight community size — 48K 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 Opensource IDE for exploring and testing APIs. English Українська Русский Türkçe Deutsch Français Português (BR) 한국어 বাংলা Español Italiano Română Polski 简体中文 正體中文 العربية 日本語 ქართული Nederlands فارسی Bruno is a new and innovative API client, aimed at revolutionizing the status quo represented by Postman and similar tools out there. Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem. We use a plain text markup language, Bru, to save information about API requests. You can use Git or any version control of your choice to collaborate over your API collections. Bruno is offline only. There…
read the full Bruno overview →
About resterm
Resterm An API as code workbench for the terminal. Resterm is your API as code, stored in plain text .http and .rest files that you can diff, review and track in version control. Edit and send requests in the terminal, or run them from scripts and CI. Request files support workflows, assertions, mock servers, tracing and profiling. No accounts, cloud sync or telemetry. Quick links: Screenshots, Quick Start, Request files, Installation, Documentation. Screenshot tour See the UI in action (click to expand) Workflows Trace and Timeline Profiler Explain RestermScript Light Theme OAuth browser demo (old UI design)…
read the full resterm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or resterm more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and resterm has 1,998. 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 (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose resterm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.