
Bruno
Open source IDE for exploring and testing APIs
Coldcast Lens
Bruno stores your API collections as plain text files in your Git repo. No cloud sync, no account, no telemetry — just `.bru` files alongside your code. For developers who believe API specs should be version-controlled like everything else, Bruno is the Postman replacement they've been wanting.
Postman is the incumbent with the deepest feature set but increasingly SaaS-dependent with cloud storage by default. Hoppscotch is browser-first and zero-install. Insomnia (Kong) has the best GraphQL experience. Bruno trades features for philosophy: offline-first, Git-native, no vendor lock-in.
Use Bruno if your team uses Git for everything and wants API collections to live in the repo, reviewed in PRs, and never stored on someone else's cloud.
The catch: Bruno is younger and less featured than Postman — no mock servers, limited team collaboration beyond Git workflows, and no CI-integrated test runner with the maturity of Newman (Postman's CLI). The `.bru` format is proprietary to Bruno, not an open standard. And for non-technical team members who just need to poke an API, Hoppscotch's browser UI is more accessible.
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