head to head · open source
Bruno vs zenstack
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zenstack has 2,957 stars, 159 forks, 182 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Bruno leads on adoption by 1,523% (47,992 vs 2,957 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; zenstack is written in TypeScript under MIT. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, zenstack 5%. Bruno was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (javascript, 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 | zenstack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 159 |
| 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 zenstack if
- You want the zenstack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and zenstack 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 zenstack
Modern Data Layer for TypeScript Apps What's ZenStack Read full documentation at 👉🏻 ZenStack is a TypeScript database toolkit for developing full stack or backend Node.js/Bun applications. It provides a unified data modeling and query solution with the following features: 🔧 Modern schema first ORM that's compatible with Prisma's schema and API 📊 Versatile API high level ORM queries + low level Kysely query builder 🔐 Built in access control and data validation 🚀 Advanced data modeling patterns like polymorphism 🧩 Designed for extensibility and flexibility ⚙️ Automatic CRUD web APIs with adapters for…
read the full zenstack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or zenstack more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and zenstack has 2,957. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and zenstack free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and zenstack under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and zenstack?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and zenstack 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 zenstack?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zenstack if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.