head to head · open source
trivy vs argo-cd
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. argo-cd has 24,178 stars, 7,852 forks, 4,362 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 57% (37,961 vs 24,178 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; argo-cd is written in Go under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, argo-cd 32%. argo-cd was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (docker, hacktoberfest), 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
| trivy | argo-cd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 24K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 7.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick trivy if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick argo-cd if
- You want the argo-cd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and argo-cd fits your workflow better
About trivy
Trivy is an open source security scanner written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It is an Aqua Security open source project, hosted at trivy.dev, and it lives in the cloud native and DevSecOps ecosystem alongside container runtimes, Kubernetes clusters, and infrastructure as code tooling. The design separates two ideas: scanners, which describe the classes of security issue Trivy looks for, and targets, which describe where it looks. The README presents the project as a comprehensive and versatile scanner, and the topic list — containers, devsecops, docker, iac, infrastructure as code, kubernetes…
read the full trivy overview →
About argo-cd
Argo CD is a declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. It lives in the cloud native ecosystem and is written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. The project describes itself as a tool for declarative continuous delivery and continuous deployment, and its application definitions, configurations, and environments are expected to be declarative and version controlled. It sits in the Infrastructure and Operations category, specifically cloud infrastructure management, and it has been developed in the open for roughly nine years, with a large community footprint measured in tens of thousands of stars…
read the full argo-cd overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or argo-cd more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and argo-cd has 24,178. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and argo-cd free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and argo-cd under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and argo-cd?
trivy is written in Go and argo-cd in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, trivy or argo-cd?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,961 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose argo-cd if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.