Bruno vs Postman in 2026: Why Developers Are Switching to Open Source API Testing

Somewhere around 2022, Postman started losing the room. Not all at once — it happened gradually, the way a tool goes from “indispensable” to “tolerated” to “actively resented” over a few years of product decisions that prioritized enterprise sales over developer experience.

The tipping point for many was the forced cloud sync. For others, it was watching their laptop’s RAM usage spike by 400MB every time they opened what should be a simple HTTP client. For some, it was the pricing page that kept getting more complicated while the free tier kept shrinking.

Bruno entered this gap in late 2022 as a quiet, opinionated alternative: offline-first, open source, Git-friendly, and fast. By 2026, it has become the default recommendation in most developer communities when someone asks “what should I use instead of Postman?”

This article breaks down the comparison in detail, so you can decide for yourself.

TL;DR

• Bruno is best for: individual developers, small teams, anyone who values speed and privacy, teams using Git-based workflows. It’s free, open source, uses ~80MB RAM, and stores collections as plain files.
• Postman is best for: large enterprise teams that need centralized cloud workspaces, mock servers, API monitoring, and extensive documentation publishing features.
• The migration from Postman to Bruno takes about 10 minutes. Bruno can directly import Postman collections.
• If you haven’t locked into Postman’s cloud ecosystem, there’s very little reason to start now.

The Problem with Postman in 2026

Let’s be specific about what went wrong, because the complaints aren’t vague “it’s bloated” hand-waving. They’re concrete, measurable issues.

Memory Usage

Postman is an Electron app with a full Chromium instance running under the hood. On a clean launch with no collections open, it consumes 250-350MB of RAM. Open a few collections, run some requests, and you’re looking at 400-600MB. On a 16GB laptop that’s also running VS Code (another Electron app), Docker, and a browser, that’s significant.

By comparison, Bruno uses around 70-90MB. It’s also Electron-based, but the team has been aggressive about optimization, and the lack of cloud sync infrastructure means there’s simply less code running.

Forced Cloud Sync

In September 2023, Postman removed the scratchpad (offline) mode and started requiring all collections to sync to their cloud. They later walked this back partially after enormous backlash, but the direction was clear: Postman wants your API collections on their servers.

For developers working with internal APIs, staging environment credentials, and API keys embedded in environment variables, this is a genuine security concern. Your company’s API surface area is now stored on a third-party cloud service, and Postman’s privacy policy gives them broad rights to use “aggregated and anonymized” data.

Pricing Creep

Postman’s free tier in 2026 limits you to 25 shared collections, 1,000 API calls through their cloud runner per month, and 3 team members. The Basic plan is $14/user/month. The Professional plan is $29/user/month. For a 10-person team, that’s $290/month — $3,480/year — for an API testing tool.

These prices aren’t inherently unreasonable for the feature set, but when the core use case (send HTTP requests, inspect responses, organize collections) can be done by a free tool with no limitations, it’s a hard sell.

Feature Bloat

Open Postman today and count the tabs in the sidebar: Collections, APIs, Environments, Mock Servers, Monitors, Flows, History, and more. The app has grown to encompass API design, documentation publishing, automated testing pipelines, mock servers, API governance, and team workspaces.

Most developers use perhaps 20% of these features. The rest is cognitive overhead — interface elements you have to navigate around to do the simple thing you came to do: send a request and look at the response.

What Is Bruno?

Bruno is an open source API client created by Anoop M D, initially released in late 2022. Its core philosophy is captured in three design decisions:

1. Offline-first. Collections are stored as files on your local filesystem. No accounts, no cloud sync, no telemetry. Your data never leaves your machine unless you choose to share it.

2. Git-friendly. Because collections are plain files (using Bruno’s own .bru markup language), you can commit them to your repository alongside your code. API collections become version-controlled, code-reviewed, and branch-aware. This is the feature that made a lot of teams switch overnight.

3. Fast and focused. Bruno does HTTP requests, GraphQL, environment management, scripting, and testing. It doesn’t try to be an API design platform or a documentation tool. It does fewer things, but does them well.

The Bru Markup Language

Instead of storing collections as opaque JSON blobs (like Postman’s collection format), Bruno uses its own human-readable markup language. A request looks like this:

meta {
  name: Get Users
  type: http
  seq: 1
}

get {
  url: {{baseUrl}}/api/users
  body: none
  auth: bearer
}

auth:bearer {
  token: {{authToken}}
}

headers {
  Content-Type: application/json
  X-Request-Id: {{$guid}}
}

tests {
  test("should return 200", function() {
    expect(res.status).to.equal(200);
  });

  test("should return array of users", function() {
    expect(res.body).to.be.an('array');
    expect(res.body.length).to.be.greaterThan(0);
  });
}

It’s readable in a code review. It diffs cleanly. You can search across your collections with grep. These are not features you appreciate until you’ve experienced the alternative: trying to review a 4,000-line Postman collection JSON export in a pull request.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Performance

Metric	Bruno	Postman
Cold start time	~2 seconds	~5-8 seconds
RAM usage (idle)	70-90 MB	250-350 MB
RAM usage (active)	100-150 MB	400-600 MB
Collection load (500 requests)	Near-instant	2-4 seconds
Disk space	~180 MB	~450 MB

These numbers are from real-world usage on a 2024 MacBook Pro with M3. Your mileage will vary, but the ratio stays consistent: Bruno uses roughly one-third the resources.

Core Features

Feature	Bruno	Postman
REST API requests	Yes	Yes
GraphQL	Yes	Yes
WebSocket	Yes (v1.x+)	Yes
gRPC	Community plugin	Yes
Environment variables	Yes	Yes
Pre/post request scripts	Yes (JavaScript)	Yes (JavaScript)
Test assertions	Yes (Chai-based)	Yes (Chai-based)
Collection runner	Yes	Yes (limited on free tier)
Request chaining	Yes (via scripts)	Yes (via scripts + flows)
Code generation	Yes	Yes
Cookie management	Yes	Yes
Client certificates	Yes	Yes
Proxy support	Yes	Yes

For day-to-day API testing, the feature set is essentially at parity. Bruno’s scripting uses the same Chai assertion library as Postman, so migrating test scripts is usually copy-paste.

Where Postman Pulls Ahead

Postman still has meaningful advantages in several areas:

Mock servers. Postman can spin up a mock server from your collection definitions with one click. Bruno doesn’t have this built in — you’d use a separate tool like WireMock or Mockoon.

API documentation publishing. Postman can generate and host beautiful API documentation from your collections. Bruno collections can serve as documentation (they’re readable files), but there’s no one-click publishing feature.

Team workspaces. For large teams (20+ people) that need centralized, real-time collaboration on API collections without using Git, Postman’s cloud workspaces are genuinely useful. Bruno’s collaboration model is Git — which works great for developer teams but less well for teams that include non-technical members.

API monitoring. Postman can run collections on a schedule from their cloud and alert you when something fails. Bruno runs locally; for scheduled API testing, you’d use a CI/CD pipeline or a dedicated monitoring tool.

Flows. Postman’s visual flow builder lets you chain requests together graphically. It’s useful for complex, multi-step API workflows. Bruno handles this through scripting, which is more powerful but less visual.

Where Bruno Wins

Git integration. This is the big one. In a modern development workflow, your API collections should live next to your code. They should be branched, merged, and reviewed like code. Bruno makes this natural. Postman makes it an afterthought.

Imagine this workflow: you create a feature branch, add new API endpoints, and create Bruno requests to test them — all committed together. Your colleague reviews the PR and can see the API tests right there in the diff. When the branch merges, the API collection updates for everyone automatically. No manual export/import, no sync conflicts, no “who has the latest version of the collection?”

Privacy. Your requests, headers, tokens, and environment variables stay on your filesystem. Period. No cloud upload, no telemetry, no aggregated analytics. For teams working with sensitive APIs (healthcare, finance, government), this isn’t a nice-to-have — it’s a requirement.

Pricing. Bruno’s open source edition is free with no feature limitations. They offer a paid “Golden Edition” ($19 one-time, not per month) that adds a visual Git client and secret management. Compare that to Postman’s $14-$29/user/month.

Speed and simplicity. Bruno launches fast, responds fast, and stays out of your way. The interface is clean. There are no popups asking you to upgrade, no onboarding wizards, no “Tip of the Day” modals.

Collaboration Approaches

This is where the philosophical difference matters most.

Postman’s model: Collections live in Postman’s cloud. Team members join a workspace. Changes sync in real time. It’s Google Docs for API testing.

Bruno’s model: Collections live in your Git repo. Team members clone the repo. Changes go through pull requests. It’s “files in a repo” for API testing.

Neither approach is universally better. But if your team already uses Git (and if you’re reading this blog, your team uses Git), Bruno’s model eliminates an entire category of sync problems. There’s one source of truth, and it’s your repository.

Migrating from Postman to Bruno

The migration process is straightforward and rarely takes more than 10 minutes.

Step 1: Export from Postman

1. Open Postman and navigate to the collection you want to export.
2. Click the three-dot menu on the collection name.
3. Select “Export.”
4. Choose “Collection v2.1” format.
5. Save the JSON file somewhere accessible.

Repeat for each collection. If you have environments to export, go to Environments, click the three-dot menu, and export each one.

Step 2: Import into Bruno

1. Open Bruno.
2. Click “Import Collection” (or use the menu: Collection > Import).
3. Select “Postman Collection” as the source format.
4. Choose the exported JSON file.
5. Pick a directory on your filesystem where the Bruno collection will be stored.

Bruno converts the Postman collection format to .bru files. Each request becomes its own file in a directory structure that mirrors your Postman folders.

Step 3: Import Environments

1. In Bruno, go to the environments panel for your collection.
2. Create new environments matching your Postman ones.
3. Copy the variable names and values from your Postman environment exports.

Bruno stores environment files as .bru files in the environments/ directory of your collection. They’re plain text, so you can also create them manually.

Step 4: Verify Your Scripts

Most Postman test scripts work in Bruno without modification because both use Chai for assertions. A few things to check:

• pm.response.json() in Postman becomes res.getBody() in Bruno.
• pm.environment.set() becomes bru.setEnvVar().
• pm.globals.set() becomes bru.setVar().
• pm.sendRequest() (sending requests from scripts) works slightly differently — check Bruno’s docs for the exact syntax.

For most collections, 90%+ of scripts work as-is. Complex scripts that use Postman-specific features like pm.visualizer or pm.execution will need rewriting.

Step 5: Commit to Git

cd your-project/
git add api-tests/
git commit -m "Migrate API collections from Postman to Bruno"

Done. Your API collections are now version-controlled.

When Postman Still Makes Sense

It would be dishonest to pretend Postman is never the right choice. Here are scenarios where it genuinely serves teams better:

Large enterprise teams with mixed technical backgrounds. If your API team includes product managers and QA engineers who aren’t comfortable with Git, Postman’s cloud workspaces provide a more accessible collaboration model.

Heavy use of mock servers and monitors. If you rely on Postman’s mock server infrastructure for development or their cloud-based monitors for production API health checks, there’s no direct Bruno equivalent. You’d need separate tools.

API-first design workflows. If your team designs APIs in Postman before implementing them, using the built-in API design tools and auto-generated documentation, that workflow doesn’t exist in Bruno.

Existing deep integration. If your CI/CD pipeline uses Newman (Postman’s CLI runner) extensively with complex setups, migration has a real cost. Bruno has its own CLI (bru run), but rewriting CI configurations takes time.

Other Alternatives Worth Knowing

Bruno isn’t the only Postman alternative. Here’s a quick rundown of the field:

Insomnia

Kong’s open source API client. It went through a rocky period in 2023-2024 when Kong added mandatory cloud accounts (sound familiar?), but the community backlash led to reversals. Insomnia now offers a fully local mode. It’s a solid middle ground between Postman’s feature richness and Bruno’s simplicity. Resource usage is comparable to Postman since it’s also Electron-based with a heavier footprint.

Hoppscotch

A web-based API client that runs in your browser. It’s fast, lightweight, and open source. The self-hosted version (Hoppscotch Community) is excellent for teams that want a shared API testing environment without installing desktop software. The limitation is that it’s browser-based, which means some features (like client certificates) are harder to support. If you’re into self-hosting, this one pairs well with the apps in our Docker Compose deployment guide.

Thunder Client

A VS Code extension that puts an API client directly in your editor. It’s phenomenal for quick, one-off requests. The lightweight nature means it uses barely any extra resources. Collections can be stored in the project directory and committed to Git. The downside is that you need to be in VS Code to use it, and complex testing workflows are limited.

HTTPie Desktop

From the makers of the popular httpie CLI tool. Clean design, good UX, but the desktop app hasn’t seen the adoption rate of Bruno or Thunder Client. Worth watching but not yet a community standard.

Developer Community Sentiment

The shift in developer sentiment has been tangible and well-documented.

Hacker News discussions about Postman from 2024-2026 follow a consistent pattern: the post will be about some new Postman feature, and the top comments are invariably about alternatives. “I switched to Bruno six months ago and haven’t looked back” has become one of those recurring HN comments, like “I use Arch, by the way.”

On Reddit’s r/webdev and r/programming, the recommendation pattern has flipped. Three years ago, “use Postman” was the default answer to “what API testing tool should I use?” Now, Bruno, Thunder Client, and Hoppscotch appear first, with Postman mentioned as the enterprise option.

The GitHub stars tell a story too. Bruno’s repository crossed 30,000 stars in 2025, making it one of the fastest-growing developer tools in the API testing space. The project’s issue tracker is active, the release cadence is steady (roughly every 2-3 weeks), and the community contributions are substantive.

What’s particularly telling is which companies and teams are switching. It’s not just solo developers and hobbyists. Teams at mid-size tech companies, consulting firms, and startups have publicly documented their migrations. The driving factors are consistently the same: Git integration, privacy, and performance.

What the UI Actually Looks Like

Since you’re probably reading this before trying Bruno, here’s what to expect when you open it:

The main window is split into three sections. The left panel shows your collections in a file-tree structure — folders and requests, much like a file explorer. The center panel is where you build and send requests: a method dropdown (GET, POST, PUT, etc.), a URL bar, and tabs for headers, body, auth, query params, scripts, tests, and docs. The right panel (or bottom panel, depending on your layout preference) shows the response: body, headers, status code, response time, and size.

The color scheme is dark by default with a clean, minimal design. There are no ads, no promotional banners, no “upgrade now” buttons. The interface is noticeably snappier than Postman’s — switching between requests is instant, and there’s no loading spinner when opening collections.

The environment switcher sits in the top-right corner. Click it, select an environment, and all {{variable}} references resolve immediately. You can see the resolved values inline by hovering over variables in the URL bar or headers.

The collection runner lets you execute all requests in a folder sequentially, with a progress bar and pass/fail results for each test assertion. The output is clear and scannable. It’s not as visual as Postman’s runner, but it gives you the information you need without the overhead.

Getting Started with Bruno

1. Download from usebruno.com. Available for macOS, Windows, and Linux.
2. Create a new collection. Choose a directory — ideally inside your project’s Git repository.
3. Add your first request. Click “New Request,” give it a name, set the method and URL, and hit Send.
4. Set up environments. Create “Development,” “Staging,” and “Production” environments with appropriate base URLs and API keys.
5. Write your first test. In the Tests tab, add a basic assertion: test("status is 200", () => expect(res.status).to.equal(200));
6. Commit to Git. Add the collection directory to your repo. You now have version-controlled, reviewable API tests.

The whole process takes about five minutes.

Wrapping Up

The Postman-to-Bruno migration is part of a broader pattern in developer tools: bloated, cloud-dependent incumbents losing ground to focused, local-first, open source alternatives. We saw it with text editors (Sublime Text and VS Code replacing Eclipse and NetBeans). We’re seeing it with API clients, and we’re seeing it in self-hosted services replacing cloud subscriptions across the board.

Bruno won’t replace Postman for everyone. Enterprise teams with deep cloud integration will stay, and that’s fine. But for the vast majority of developers — people who want to send HTTP requests, write test assertions, and keep their API collections in Git — Bruno does the job better, faster, and without asking for your credit card.

Give it a week. Import your Postman collections, use Bruno as your daily driver, and see if you miss anything. Most people don’t.

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Are you using Bruno on a team? We’d love to hear how you structured your collections in your Git repos. Share your setup and we might feature it in a follow-up article.