head to head · open source
Bruno vs ts-rest
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars, 2,890 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ts-rest has 3,337 stars, 177 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 1,309% (47,027 vs 3,337 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; ts-rest is written in TypeScript under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, ts-rest 5%. 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 | ts-rest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-02-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 177 |
| 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 ts-rest if
- You want the ts-rest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ts-rest 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 ts-rest
ts rest Incrementally adoptable RPC like client and server helpers for a magical end to end typed experience 🪄 Join us on Discord for help, feedback, and discussions! Introduction ts rest offers a simple way to define a contract for your API, which can be both consumed and implemented by your application, giving you end to end type safety without the hassle or code generation. Features End to end type safety 🛟 RPC like client side API ⚡️ Small Bundle Size 📉 No Code Generation 🏃♀️ Zod support for runtime validation 🔒 Full optional OpenAPI integration 📝 👉 Start reading the official Quickstart Guide 👈 Super…
read the full ts-rest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or ts-rest more popular?
Bruno has 47,027 GitHub stars and ts-rest has 3,337. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and ts-rest free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and ts-rest under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and ts-rest?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and ts-rest 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 ts-rest?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,027 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ts-rest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.