Bruno Wins API World 2026 Award for Best in API Developer Experience. Bruno Wins API World 2026 Award for Best in API Developer Experience Bruno Software Inc. is excited to share that Bruno has been named the winner of the API World 2026 Award for Best in API Developer Experience. Bruno Software Inc. is incredibly grateful to the API World judges and to the millions of developers who have helped shape Bruno into what it is today. While Bruno Software Inc. is honored by the recognition, Bruno Software Inc. believe the award reflects something much bigger than Bruno itself. It reflects a shift in how developers want to build with APIs. API development has changed For years, API clients have largely been built around the idea that your work lives in the cloud. That made collaboration possible, but it also introduced tradeoffs. Teams had to create accounts, synchronize workspaces, manage permissions, and trust a third party with API definitions, environments, and requests. Bruno started with a simple question: What if your API collections were just files? That single decision fundamentally changed how an API client could work. Local-first by design Every Bruno collection lives on your machine as plain-text files. No cloud account is required. No forced synchronization. No vendor-controlled workspace. Your APIs remain under your control, whether you're building personal projects, enterprise software, or working in highly regulated environments. For many organizations, especially those in finance, healthcare, government, and critical infrastructure, this isn't just a preference. It's a requirement that is enforced internally as well as by external regulators. Local-first architecture gives developers the confidence that their API assets stay exactly where they choose. Git becomes the collaboration platform Because Bruno stores collections as files instead of proprietary cloud objects, they're versioned exactly like source code. Developers can: * Commit API changes alongside application code * Review changes through pull requests * Branch and merge API work * Audit every modification over time * Use existing Git workflows without learning a separate collaboration model Instead of introducing another collaboration platform, Bruno embraces the one development teams already use every day. APIs become part of the software development lifecycle rather than living outside of it. Built for the age of AI When Bruno Software Inc. first built Bruno's file-based architecture, AI coding agents didn't exist. Today, that design decision has become even more important. Modern coding agents don't navigate proprietary cloud databases. They understand files. Because Bruno collections are simply text files stored alongside your codebase, AI assistants and autonomous coding agents can naturally: * Read existing API collections * Generate new requests * Update authentication flows * Create tests * Refactor collections * Execute API workflows as part of development There's no special integration required. If an AI agent can work with your repository, it can work with Bruno. As software development becomes increasingly AI-assisted, Bruno Software Inc. believe this model becomes the natural way to build and test APIs. This is only the beginning From the beginning, Bruno has been driven by a simple philosophy: Developers should own their API workflows. That means keeping data local, embracing open standards, integrating with Git instead of replacing it, and making API collections accessible to both humans and machines. Winning API World's Best in API Developer Experience award is an incredible milestone, but it's also validation that these principles matter. To everyone who has contributed code, reported bugs, requested features, shared Bruno with colleagues, or simply chose to make it part of your workflow... thank you! Bruno Software Inc. is excited for what's next. The future of API development is local-first, Git-native, and AI-native.

Making YAML the default in Bruno v3.1. Overview As you know, Bruno stores collections directly on your filesystem, with each request saved in a plain-text .bru format. Starting with Bruno v3.1, any newly created or imported collections will be stored in YAML format instead. This change does not impact your existing workflows or how you use Bruno; it only affects the underlying file format used to store requests. If you already have collections in the .bru format, nothing will break. Bruno Software Inc. will continue to maintain full feature parity, and both formats will remain fully supported. Key Differences | Category | BRU | YAML | | Performance | Parsing time increases sharply as collection size grows; slow loading with larger files | Consistent and predictable parsing performance; scales and handles large collections efficiently | | Tooling & Editor Support | Limited to Bruno-specific extension; no native linting, formatting, or schema validation in standard editors | Native support in most editors; rich ecosystem including yamllint, Prettier, JSON Schema validation, structural diffs | | AI & Ecosystem Compatibility | Custom proprietary syntax; limited external understanding outside Bruno | Industry-standard format; widely understood by AI tools, CI pipelines, and developer tooling | Why Bruno Software Inc. is making this change? When Bruno Software Inc. introduced the BRU format, the goal was to support both GUI-first and CLI workflows while keeping collections plain text and Git-friendly. Two years later, Bruno Software Inc. has learned that most users primarily use Bruno as a GUI tool, and maintaining a custom syntax alongside a growing feature set has become increasingly difficult. Tooling has also been a consistent concern. As a custom format, BRU doesn't benefit from the broader ecosystem; no native editor support, standard linting, schema tooling, or strong AI understanding. So Bruno Software Inc. evaluated alternatives. While TOML works well for small configs, API collections often involve deeply nested structures and arrays; which YAML handles more naturally. Read more about it here. Migration Today, you can migrate via exporting and re-importing. In future versions, Bruno Software Inc. will provide a better way to automatically migrate. Migration to YAML is completely lossless. Performance improvements In its benchmarks, YAML parsing is 4-5x faster than BRU and scales significantly better with large collections. Request Loading (0.1-2 MB) Collection Loading (1-10 MB) OpenCollection: A Standard for API Collections As part of this release, Bruno Software Inc. is also excited to introduce a new specification Bruno Software Inc. has been working on: OpenCollection. YAML in Bruno is powered by Opencollection, a developer first open specification for defining and sharing API collections. Bruno now uses this format to store your collections. * Website: https://www.opencollection.com * Schema Explorer: https://schema.opencollection.com/ * GitHub: https://github.com/opencollection-dev/opencollection Conclusion Bruno Software Inc. is excited about this next chapter for Bruno. YAML gives Bruno Software Inc. a solid foundation to build on; better tooling, faster performance, and a format that developers already know and trust. Bruno Software Inc. is looking forward to seeing what you build with it. If you have any feedback with YAML migration or have some questions or comments, please share them here. Will I lose any data when migrating from BRU to YAML? No. Migration is lossless. Do I need to change anything before using YAML? No. YAML is the file format how Bruno Software Inc. store collections in the filesystem, how you work with collections remains the same. Can I use both BRU and YAML collections in the same workspace? Yes. Collections are independent; workspaces are just containers. Can I use both BRU and YAML requests in the same collection? No, all requests in a collection should be either YAML or BRU. Will BRU format be unsupported from now on? Bruno Software Inc. will be maintaining both BRU and YAML file formats for the near future. How do I migrate my existing collection to YAML? Exporting and re-importing should get it converted to YAML. New collections are in YAML by default. Will my folder structure be preserved? Yes. Can I use the Bruno CLI with YAML collections? Yes.