head to head · open source
shannon vs akto
shannon has 48,205 GitHub stars, 5,529 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. akto has 1,518 stars, 292 forks, 347 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shannon leads on adoption by 3,076% (48,205 vs 1,518 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; akto is written in Java under MIT. shannon has attracted 11% 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. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| shannon | akto | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 292 |
| 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 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 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 akto
Akto is an open source Java project under the MIT license. Its metadata presents it as an AI security platform for teams that secure AI agents, MCPs, LLMs, Agent skills, and Gen AI apps, while its README describes it as an open source API security platform. It lives in the open source API security and AI security ecosystem.
More in AI & Machine Learning
Related comparisons
More AI Security & Privacy projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Security & Privacy field.
Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or akto more popular?
shannon has 48,205 GitHub stars and akto has 1,518. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and akto free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and akto under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and akto?
shannon is written in TypeScript 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, shannon or akto?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (48,205 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose akto if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.