head to head · open source
Bruno vs Scalar
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Scalar has 16,136 stars, 937 forks, 68 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 191% (47,022 vs 16,136 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; Scalar is written in TypeScript under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Scalar 6%. Scalar was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (api-client, http-client, 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 | Scalar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 937 |
| 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 Scalar if
- You want the Scalar feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Scalar 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 Scalar
Scalar is open source API documentation and testing platform. It lives in TypeScript ecosystem, with Vue in topics, and targets REST API, OpenAPI, Swagger, API client, docs, http client, reference work. License is MIT. It gives interactive API reference from OpenAPI/Swagger documents, plus built in API testing tool. It also gives offline first API client built for OpenAPI.
read the full Scalar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or Scalar more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and Scalar has 16,136. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and Scalar free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and Scalar under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and Scalar?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and Scalar 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 Scalar?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Scalar if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.