head to head · open source
Bruno vs xh
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xh has 8,165 stars, 152 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 488% (47,992 vs 8,165 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; xh is written in Rust under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, xh 2%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (api-testing, developer-tools, http-client), 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 | xh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 152 |
| 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 xh if
- You want the xh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and xh 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 xh
xh xh is a friendly and fast tool for sending HTTP requests. It reimplements as much as possible of HTTPie's excellent design, with a focus on improved performance. Installation via cURL (Linux & macOS) via Powershell (Windows) via a package manager \ Make sure that you have Rust 1.85 or later installed \ \ You will need to install the MMRL CLI \ \ \ Built with native tls only. \ \ \ \ Available since Debian 13 and Ubuntu 25.04. Built with native tls only. \ \ \ \ \ Enable COPR repo via sudo dnf copr enable ducaale/xh [Huber]: [Mise]: [Magisk]: [KernelSU]: [Termux]: [Flox]: [Hermit]: via pre built binaries The…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or xh more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and xh has 8,165. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and xh free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and xh under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and xh?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and xh in Rust. 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 xh?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xh if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.