Comparison · BridgeLab
BridgeLab vs HL7 Soup, compared on published facts
Two desktop workbenches for people who read, edit and send HL7 messages every day. They are priced and built very differently, and neither replaces an integration engine.
Disclosure. We make BridgeLab. Everything stated here about HL7 Soup comes from Integration Soup's own published pages, checked on 29 September 2026 and listed below, so you can verify each line yourself. Where their pages do not state something, we say so instead of guessing.
Side by side
| Criterion | BridgeLab 1.8.1 | HL7 Soup Editor |
|---|---|---|
| Licence model | Free core under the MIT licence, commercial use allowed. Pro and Enterprise are annual subscriptions per seat; one seat covers two activations. | Subscription only. The installed Windows editor is licensed per user and per machine: each user-machine combination requires a licence. |
| Published price | Community €0. Pro €249/year per seat (€199 first year during the launch offer). Enterprise €499/year per seat. −10% from 3 seats, −15% from 5. Taxes excluded. | Per-user subscription from $40/user/month. Site licence from $699/month.* Enterprise by quotation. USD, taxes excluded. |
| Free option | Permanent free core, no time limit. | HL7 Soup Online, a free hosted edition in the browser with no time limit; they recommend it for non-sensitive samples, it works best under 100 messages and it has no MLLP or HTTP send-and-receive. 30-day trial for the Windows editor. |
| Native platforms | Windows (installer and MSI), macOS on Intel and Apple Silicon, Linux as .deb, .rpm or AppImage. | Windows editor. Mac and Linux are covered through HL7 Soup Web in a browser, included with a paid licence. |
| HL7 v2 coverage | v2.1 to v2.7.1: ten selectable catalogues with 1,965 message definitions, chosen from MSH-12, so field names, types and lengths come from the version the message itself declares. The free core covers v2.5; the full catalogue comes with Pro. v2.8 and later are not covered. | HL7 v2.1 through v2.9. |
| FHIR | Parses and validates FHIR resources in JSON and XML. Profile conformance against the FHIR R4 core shipped inside the binary and any installed FHIR NPM package: cardinality, element types, choice elements, fixed values, unknown elements, primitive formats and Bundle references, entry by entry. FHIRPath 2.0 with the full operator set, verified against the official HL7 FHIRPath test suite. Terminology out of scope by design. | Not documented on their Editor pages,† which describe HL7 v2.x. FHIR appears under their separate Integration Host product. |
| Send and receive | MLLP client and server with custom framing, automatic ACK and encoding selection; the listener is a Pro feature and listens on this computer only unless you open it to the network. HTTP client with GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH, Basic and Bearer authentication, custom headers and timeout. | TCP/MLLP, REST/HTTP and WCF, with automatic ACK generation and a dedicated ACK list. |
| Command line | Supported CLI build shipped with the app, so the same validation runs in a pipeline. | Not documented on their Editor pages.† |
| Extending the rules | JSON plugin packs extend the validator and the PHI anonymiser without running any code: extra HL7 v2 rules, extra FHIR rules as a FHIRPath invariant or a selector plus a check, and extra PHI fields. Every pack kind and every check type runs in every edition; Community keeps up to three packs active at once, unlimited in Pro. Only the in-app editor that writes FHIR packs is a Pro feature. | Validation, highlighting and comparison rules can be designed and shared with their interface designer. |
| Where your data goes | Messages stay on your machine. The app reaches the network to activate a licence and pick up its renewal and, if you allow it, to check GitHub for a new version; telemetry is opt-in and off by default. IT can switch off both the update check and telemetry for a whole machine with a policy file. | Their pages state that local messages are viewed in the browser without being sent to their servers, and that customer data is not accessed or used for AI training. For the free hosted edition they advise against pasting patient-identifiable, production or regulated data without approval from your organisation. |
* Integration Soup publishes the monthly per-user rate. Annual billing is offered, but its rate appears only at checkout, so we do not state it here.
† Not stated on their Editor or purchase pages, which describe HL7 v2.x. Absence from a page is not proof of absence from a product.
Where HL7 Soup is the stronger tool
- A free edition that runs in any browser with nothing to install, handy for a quick look at a non-sensitive sample.
- An interpretation panel that renders a message as readable English sentences, with every item hyperlinked back to the exact cursor position.
- A segment grid for people who would rather not read raw delimiters.
- A library of sample messages and free video tutorials accumulated over years.
- HL7 Soup Web handles very large message sets, into the millions of records.
- Covers HL7 v2.8 and v2.9. BridgeLab's catalogue stops at v2.7.1, because the MIT-licensed dictionary it builds on ends there.
Where BridgeLab fits better
- A free core that runs on your own machine, so it can open production messages that should never be pasted into a website: MIT, commercial use allowed, no expiry.
- A SIMD-accelerated streaming parser that handles 5-10 MB messages with base64 sections.
- FHIR in JSON and XML, with profile conformance against the R4 core shipped inside the binary and any package you install.
- FHIRPath 2.0 with the full operator set and around 70 functions, verified against the official HL7 FHIRPath test suite.
- Every value from an HL7 table says what it means where you meet it: 394 HL7 tables, about 5,000 codes, mapped per version to every coded field and component, in the tree, on hover in the editor and in the Field Inspector, which tells an HL7-defined table from a user-defined one.
- Outcome filters on the listener console and the send history: AA, AE, AR, no ACK and failed, each with a live count, and every MLLP send records the ACK code it got back.
- PHI anonymisation across 21 known field definitions in PID, NK1, IN1 and GT1.
- XSD schema export for engines that accept hand-authored schemas.
- A Field Inspector and a schema-aware tree that show what the standard defines, including the fields nobody populated.
- Native on Windows, macOS and Linux, five interface languages, and a supported command line for CI.
- A lower published price per seat, and a seat that covers two activations rather than one machine.
Checked on 29 September 2026. If anything here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
Sources, all consulted on 29 September 2026: Integration Soup purchase page for HL7 Soup Editor, HL7 Soup Editor features page, the HL7 Soup Online page, the Integration Soup download page, and the BridgeLab release and landing pages. HL7 Soup and Integration Host are products of Popokey Software; HL7® and FHIR® are registered trademarks of Health Level Seven International. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. Comparison based on publicly published information at the date shown.
Try it against your own messages
The free core opens real messages without a licence, a trial clock or an account. The fastest way to settle a comparison is to run both on a file you already have.