How Actively Are Open-Source API Clients Still Being Built? (2026)
Open-source API clients like Bruno and Kong's Insomnia are still under heavy development. Here's what their public GitHub activity shows about how actively they're being built.
Contents
OverviewThe short version52 weeks of commits, week by week (measured 2026-08-20)The short answer: active, by the numbersWhy the question comes up at allReading a repository for signs of ongoing workBruno: filesystem-first and still shippingInsomnia: a long-running project maintained under KongHow to check any client yourself before you commitBottom lineFAQSourcesCommercial API clients have pushed steadily toward accounts, seats and cloud storage, which leaves a practical question for anyone who prefers to run and version their requests locally: is anyone still building open-source API clients, or are the popular ones drifting into maintenance mode?
The public record on GitHub answers this without much ambiguity. Two prominent open-source clients, Bruno and Kong's Insomnia, both carry the fingerprints of software that people are actively writing right now. Below is what their repositories show as of 2026-08-20, and how you can read the same signals for any project you are weighing.
The short version
Open-source API clients are still being actively built. As of 2026-08-20, Bruno (usebruno/bruno) showed 46.4k stars and 4,819 commits, and Kong's Insomnia (Kong/insomnia) showed 40k stars and 6,434 commits, both with open issues and pull requests in active use. Bruno is MIT-licensed and stores collections as plain-text files on your filesystem (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20). If you want a local-first client, Bruno's stated offline-only design is the clearest fit among the two on the pages we read.
52 weeks of commits, week by week (measured 2026-08-20)
| Repository | 2025-08-21 → 2025-11-20 | 2025-11-20 → 2026-02-19 | 2026-02-19 → 2026-05-21 | 2026-05-21 → 2026-08-20 | 52-week total | Week by week |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bruno | 318 | 495 | 284 | 500 | 1,597 | |
| Insomnia | 186 | 168 | 157 | 279 | 790 | |
| Hoppscotch | 92 | 107 | 101 | 55 | 355 | |
| HTTPie | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Measuring weekly commit counts pulled from each project's public GitHub statistics endpoint over the same 52 weeks, our 2026-08-20 snapshot found Bruno logging 1,597 commits across the year — including 500 in the most recent 13-week window ending 2026-08-20 — while HTTPie's command-line repository recorded 0 commits in every one of those four windows, its last commit dating to 2024-12-17. Insomnia (790) and Hoppscotch (355) sat between those poles, though Hoppscotch's window-by-window figures slipped from 92 to 55 over the year even as Bruno's and Insomnia's most recent windows rose. For someone weighing whether to build on one of these tools, a steady or climbing commit cadence at least suggests the code is still being actively touched and that bugs or security issues might plausibly get attention, whereas a repository dormant for well over a year signals the opposite. None of this establishes that the busier projects are higher quality, that their commits represent real progress rather than churn, how many people actually use any of them, or whether any given project will still be maintained a year from now — it counts commits, nothing more.
Weekly commit counts for the last 52 weeks, from each repository's own GitHub statistics endpoint, grouped into four 13-week windows. Every repository is measured over the same 52 weeks, so the columns are directly comparable. Commit counts include merges, dependency bumps and documentation edits, and a monorepo will always show more commits than a single-purpose repository — this measures how busy a repository is, not progress, quality, or how much of the work reaches users. Collected by this site on 2026-08-20 (2026-08-20T00:04:46Z) by calling the public APIs ourselves — 12 of 12 requests returned data. These are our own readings, not figures supplied by any vendor.
The short answer: active, by the numbers
Yes. Judged by the usual public indicators of ongoing work, open-source API clients are still being built at a healthy pace. Two projects carry most of the weight in this space.
Bruno, in the usebruno/bruno repository, showed 46.4k GitHub stars, 2.8k forks and 4,819 commits as of 2026-08-20, alongside 1.3k open issues and 514 open pull requests. It is released under the MIT license (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20).
Insomnia, in the Kong/insomnia repository, showed 40k stars, 2.4k forks and 6,434 commits as of 2026-08-20, with 739 open issues and 125 open pull requests, and its default branch is named develop (Kong/insomnia repository, 2026-08-20).
Commit totals in the thousands, hundreds of open pull requests awaiting review, and issue trackers in active use are the marks of tools that people are still writing and shipping.
Why the question comes up at all
Bruno's readme frames the project as "a new and innovative API client, aimed at revolutionizing the status quo represented by Postman and similar tools out there" (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20). That positioning captures why developers keep asking whether open-source clients are alive: many people want a tool they can install, run and store data with locally, without leaning on a vendor's cloud.
Bruno leans into that preference directly. Its readme states that it "is offline-only" and that "there are no plans to add cloud-sync to Bruno, ever" (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20). For a reader deciding where to invest their request collections, an explicit local-first stance is part of what "still being built" needs to mean in practice.
Reading a repository for signs of ongoing work
Star counts draw the eye, but they mostly record past popularity rather than current effort. A few other signals track whether code is still being written, and both projects above expose them publicly.
- Commit history. A large, growing commit total points to continuous change. Bruno listed 4,819 commits and Insomnia 6,434 commits as of 2026-08-20.
- Open pull requests. Contributors proposing changes is a live-project signal. Bruno showed 514 open pull requests and Insomnia 125 as of 2026-08-20.
- Issue trackers in use. Bruno's 1.3k open issues and Insomnia's 739 open issues (2026-08-20) reflect real usage and triage, not an abandoned inbox.
- Distribution and tooling. New package-manager entries, a maintained command-line tool and current Docker images all show a project investing in how people install and run it.
Higher numbers do not automatically mean a better tool, and none of these figures should be read as a quality ranking. They indicate momentum, which is exactly what the query is asking about.
Bruno: filesystem-first and still shipping
Bruno's design puts your data on your own disk. According to its readme (2026-08-20), "Bruno stores your collections directly in a folder on your filesystem," using a plain-text markup language called Bru to save request information, so you can version collections with Git or any other system you choose.
The surrounding tooling shows active build-out rather than a frozen core. Bruno ships a command-line runner, installable from npm as @usebruno/cli, for running collections in automated testing and CI/CD pipelines. Official Docker images are published to both Docker Hub and the GitHub Container Registry on every CLI release, with alpine and debian variants for linux/amd64 and linux/arm64 (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20). The readme also documents installation through Homebrew, Chocolatey, Scoop, winget, Snap, Flatpak, Apt and the Arch User Repository.
On sustainability, Bruno's readme states that the "majority of our features are free and open source" and points readers to paid commercial versions for additional team features; the readme did not list prices for those paid versions as of 2026-08-20. A funded path alongside the open-source core is one reason a project keeps getting built.
Insomnia: a long-running project maintained under Kong
Insomnia sits in the Kong/insomnia repository and carries a longer commit history than Bruno: 6,434 commits as of 2026-08-20. Its 40k stars and 2.4k forks put it firmly among the most-starred clients in the category on that date.
The repository layout itself signals maintenance. It carries a maintained CHANGELOG.md and a CONTRIBUTING.md guide, and development happens on an active develop branch rather than a stale main line (Kong/insomnia repository, 2026-08-20). Insomnia is released under the Apache-2.0 license, and its readme describes debugging, design, testing and mocking across REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, Server-Sent Events and gRPC, with cloud, local and Git storage options (Kong/insomnia repository and readme, 2026-08-20). Pricing and plan details were not covered on the pages we read that day, so confirm those on the project's own site before you commit to it.
How to check any client yourself before you commit
The same method works for any open-source API client you are considering, not just these two. Open its repository and look for a short, repeatable checklist:
- Is the most recent commit recent, and is the commit total still climbing?
- Are pull requests being opened and merged, or are they piling up untouched?
- Does the issue tracker show maintainers responding, labeling and closing?
- Are there current releases, packaged installers or container images that match the latest version?
- Is the license stated clearly in the repository, so you know your rights to use and modify it?
Both Bruno and Insomnia pass the first three tests on their public pages as of 2026-08-20. Both also state a license openly: Bruno the MIT license in its readme, Insomnia the Apache-2.0 license in its repository and readme (usebruno/bruno and Kong/insomnia, 2026-08-20).
Open-source API clients are not a leftover from the pre-cloud era. They are receiving regular work today. On their official GitHub repositories as of 2026-08-20, Bruno and Insomnia each showed thousands of commits, tens of thousands of stars and open pull-request queues, which is what continuous development looks like from the outside.
For choosing between the two, weigh the signals that track current effort over raw star counts: recent commits, release cadence, and whether issues and pull requests are being handled. Bruno's readme (2026-08-20) also documents a firm offline-only, filesystem-first design and an MIT license, which is decisive if local storage and permissive licensing are hard requirements for you. Insomnia is Apache-2.0 licensed and its readme documents debugging, design, testing and mocking with cloud, local and Git storage (Kong/insomnia, 2026-08-20) — a different trade-off from Bruno's offline-only design rather than a weaker one.
FAQ
Are open-source API clients still actively maintained in 2026?
Yes. As of 2026-08-20, Bruno's GitHub repository showed 4,819 commits with 514 open pull requests, and Kong's Insomnia showed 6,434 commits with 125 open pull requests, both alongside active issue trackers — the standard public signals of ongoing development (usebruno/bruno and Kong/insomnia repositories, 2026-08-20).
Is Bruno free?
Bruno's readme states that the majority of its features are free and open source, and the project is released under the MIT license (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20). The same readme also points to paid commercial versions for additional features; it did not list prices for them as of 2026-08-20.
Where does Bruno store API collections?
Bruno stores collections directly in a folder on your filesystem, using a plain-text markup language called Bru, so you can version them with Git or another system of your choice. Its readme also states the app is offline-only with no planned cloud sync (usebruno/bruno readme, 2026-08-20).
How can I tell if an open-source API client is still being built?
Open its GitHub repository and check whether the commit total is still growing, whether pull requests are being opened and merged, whether the issue tracker shows maintainer responses, and whether there are current releases or Docker images. Both Bruno and Insomnia met the first several of these on their public pages as of 2026-08-20.