head to head · open source
shannon vs ADR
shannon has 48,205 GitHub stars, 5,529 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. ADR has 1,575 stars, 148 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shannon leads on adoption by 2,961% (48,205 vs 1,575 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; ADR is written in Python under Apache-2.0. shannon has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, ADR 9%. ADR was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-security), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| shannon | ADR | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 148 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick shannon if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ADR if
- You want the ADR feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and ADR fits your workflow better
About shannon
Shannon is an autonomous AI pentester for web applications and APIs that reads an application's source code, identifies attack paths, and executes real exploits so that only vulnerabilities with a working proof of concept are reported, built for AppSec, DevSecOps, and security engineering teams that ship code continuously.
read the full shannon overview →
About ADR
ADR is an open source enterprise security system for AI agents. It is built in Python under the Apache 2.0 license and lives in the AI security and privacy ecosystem. It targets employee facing coding agents such as Cursor, Claude Code, Codex, GitHub Copilot CLI, and DeepSeek Harness, and customer facing agents such as AI support agents.
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or ADR more popular?
shannon has 48,205 GitHub stars and ADR has 1,575. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and ADR free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ADR under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and ADR?
shannon is written in TypeScript and ADR in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, shannon or ADR?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (48,205 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ADR if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.