head to head · open source
Bruno vs rswag
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars, 2,890 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. rswag has 2,201 stars, 454 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 26 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 2,037% (47,027 vs 2,201 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; rswag is written in Ruby under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, rswag 21%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | rswag | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 454 |
| 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 rswag if
- You want the rswag feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and rswag 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 rswag
rswag is an MIT licensed Ruby gem that extends rspec rails request specs with a Swagger based DSL, so a Rails API team can describe and test its endpoints in one place and generate OpenAPI 3.0 files plus an embedded swagger ui from green tests.
read the full rswag overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or rswag more popular?
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars and rswag has 2,201. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and rswag free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and rswag under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and rswag?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and rswag in Ruby. 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 rswag?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,027 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rswag if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.