head to head · open source
garak vs akto
garak has 9,850 GitHub stars, 1,439 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. akto has 1,542 stars, 293 forks, 347 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. garak leads on adoption by 539% (9,850 vs 1,542 stars). garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0; akto is written in Java under MIT. garak has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, akto 19%. akto was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| garak | akto | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.8K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 293 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick garak if
- You weight community size — 9.8K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick akto if
- You want the akto feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and akto fits your workflow better
About garak
garak, LLM vulnerability scanner Generative AI Red teaming & Assessment Kit garak checks if an LLM can be made to fail in a way we don't want. garak probes for hallucination, data leakage, prompt injection, misinformation, toxicity generation, jailbreaks, and many other weaknesses. If you know nmap or msf / Metasploit Framework, garak does somewhat similar things to them, but for LLMs. garak focuses on ways of making an LLM or dialog system fail. It combines static, dynamic, and adaptive probes to explore this. garak 's a free tool. We love developing it and are always interested in adding functionality to…
read the full garak overview →
About akto
Akto.io API Security Contributors What is Akto? How it works • Getting Started • API Inventory • API testing • Add Test • Join Discord community • Akto is an instant, open source API security platform that takes only 60 secs to get started. Akto is used by security teams to maintain a continuous inventory of APIs, test APIs for vulnerabilities and find runtime issues. Akto offers coverage for all OWASP top 10 and HackerOne Top 10 categories including BOLA, authentication, SSRF, XSS, security configurations, etc. Akto's powerful testing engine runs variety of business logic tests by reading traffic data to…
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Frequently asked questions
Is garak or akto more popular?
garak has 9,850 GitHub stars and akto has 1,542. garak has the larger community by that measure.
Are garak and akto free?
Both are open source. garak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and akto under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between garak and akto?
garak is written in Python and akto in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, garak or akto?
Choose garak if you want the larger community (9,850 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose akto if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.