head to head · open source
Bruno vs swag
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars, 2,888 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swag has 13,024 stars, 1,547 forks, 476 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 261% (47,022 vs 13,024 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; swag is written in Go under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, swag 12%. 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 | swag | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 13K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 swag if
- You want the swag feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swag 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 swag
Swag is a command line tool that converts Go source annotations into Swagger 2.0 documentation. It lives in the Go ecosystem, is distributed under the MIT license, and is maintained by the swaggo organization. The project has been active for nine years, with the most recent push recorded in September 2026, and it carries roughly 13,000 stars and 1,545 forks on GitHub.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or swag more popular?
Bruno has 47,022 GitHub stars and swag has 13,024. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and swag free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and swag under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and swag?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and swag 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 swag?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,022 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose swag if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.