head to head · open source
Bruno vs Insomnia
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars, 3,068 forks, 1,831 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Insomnia has 40,111 stars, 2,388 forks, 874 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Bruno leads on adoption by 20% (47,992 vs 40,111 stars). Bruno is written in JavaScript under MIT; Insomnia is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Bruno has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Insomnia 6%. 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-client, http-client, rest-api), 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 | Insomnia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 40K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| 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 Insomnia if
- You want the Insomnia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Insomnia 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 Insomnia
Insomnia API Client Insomnia is an open source, cross platform API client for GraphQL, REST, WebSockets, Server Sent Events (SSE), gRPC and any other HTTP compatible protocol. With Insomnia you can: Debug APIs using the most popular protocols and formats. Design APIs using the native OpenAPI editor and visual preview. Test APIs using native test suites and collection runner. Mock APIs using a cloud or self hosted mocking server. Build CI/CD pipelines using the native Insomnia CLI for linting and testing. Collaborate with others using the many collaboration features. And more including the ability to use 3rd…
read the full Insomnia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Bruno or Insomnia more popular?
Bruno has 47,992 GitHub stars and Insomnia has 40,111. Bruno has the larger community by that measure.
Are Bruno and Insomnia free?
Both are open source. Bruno is licensed under MIT and Insomnia under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Bruno and Insomnia?
Bruno is written in JavaScript and Insomnia 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 Insomnia?
Choose Bruno if you want the larger community (47,992 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Insomnia if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.