head to head · open source
crowdsec vs vuls
crowdsec has 15,510 GitHub stars, 757 forks, 296 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. vuls has 12,331 stars, 1,246 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crowdsec leads on adoption by 26% (15,510 vs 12,331 stars). crowdsec is written in Go under MIT; vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0. crowdsec has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, vuls 10%. vuls was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cybersecurity), 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
| crowdsec | vuls | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 757 | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crowdsec if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick vuls if
- You want the vuls feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and vuls fits your workflow better
About crowdsec
CrowdSec: open source IDS/IPS, WAF and bot detection CrowdSec is an open source and participative security solution offering crowdsourced server detection and protection against malicious IPs. Detect and block with our Security Engine, contribute to the network, and enjoy our real time community blocklist. Features & Advantages Versatile Security Engine CrowdSec Security Engine is an all in one IDS/IPS and WAF. It detects bad behaviors by analyzing log sources and HTTP requests, and allows active remediation thanks to the Remediation Components. Detection rules are available on our hub under MIT license…
read the full crowdsec overview →
About vuls
Vuls: VULnerability Scanner Vulnerability scanner for Linux/FreeBSD, agent less, written in Go. Twitter: @vuls en Abstract For a system administrator, having to perform security vulnerability analysis and software update on a daily basis can be a burden. To avoid downtime in a production environment, it is common for a system administrator to choose not to use the automatic update option provided by the package manager and to perform update manually. This leads to the following problems. The system administrator will have to constantly watch out for any new vulnerabilities in NVD (National Vulnerability…
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Frequently asked questions
Is crowdsec or vuls more popular?
crowdsec has 15,510 GitHub stars and vuls has 12,331. crowdsec has the larger community by that measure.
Are crowdsec and vuls free?
Both are open source. crowdsec is licensed under MIT and vuls under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crowdsec and vuls?
crowdsec is written in Go and vuls 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, crowdsec or vuls?
Choose crowdsec if you want the larger community (15,510 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose vuls if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.