head to head · open source
aircrack-ng vs rundeck
aircrack-ng has 7,659 GitHub stars, 1,375 forks, 462 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. rundeck has 6,304 stars, 987 forks, 81 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. aircrack-ng leads on adoption by 21% (7,659 vs 6,304 stars). aircrack-ng is written in C under GPL-2.0; rundeck is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0. aircrack-ng has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, rundeck 16%. rundeck was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (audit), 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
| aircrack-ng | rundeck | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.7K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Groovy |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 987 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick aircrack-ng if
- You weight community size — 7.7K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rundeck if
- You want the rundeck feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You evaluated both and rundeck fits your workflow better
About aircrack-ng
Aircrack ng is a GPL 2.0 licensed suite of WiFi security auditing tools written in C, intended for network auditors, penetration testers, and compliance and risk management teams who assess wireless networks on hardware they control.
read the full aircrack-ng overview →
About rundeck
Rundeck is an open source runbook automation service maintained by PagerDuty, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and published from the rundeck.org homepage. It provides a web console, command line tools, and a WebAPI, and its stated purpose is to enable self service operations by giving specific users access to existing tools, services, and scripts. The repository is 16 years old and lives in the DevOps and operations tooling ecosystem, alongside topics such as ansible, automation, deployment, audit, ops, and devops tools.
read the full rundeck overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is aircrack-ng or rundeck more popular?
aircrack-ng has 7,659 GitHub stars and rundeck has 6,304. aircrack-ng has the larger community by that measure.
Are aircrack-ng and rundeck free?
Both are open source. aircrack-ng is licensed under GPL-2.0 and rundeck under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between aircrack-ng and rundeck?
aircrack-ng is written in C and rundeck in Groovy. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, aircrack-ng or rundeck?
Choose aircrack-ng if you want the larger community (7,659 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose rundeck if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.