head to head · open source
crowdsec vs WhatWeb
crowdsec has 14,956 GitHub stars, 719 forks, 296 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WhatWeb has 6,855 stars, 1,013 forks, 51 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. crowdsec leads on adoption by 118% (14,956 vs 6,855 stars). crowdsec is written in Go under MIT; WhatWeb is written in Ruby under GPL-2.0. crowdsec has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, WhatWeb 15%. crowdsec 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
| crowdsec | WhatWeb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 6.9K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-04-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 719 | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crowdsec if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WhatWeb if
- You want the WhatWeb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and WhatWeb fits your workflow better
About crowdsec
CrowdSec is an open source, MIT licensed intrusion detection and prevention system, WAF and bot detection engine that analyses logs and HTTP requests and blocks malicious IPs at the firewall, reverse proxy or CDN, built for Linux, Windows, Docker and Kubernetes operators who want community sourced threat intelligence sitting behind their own infrastructure.
read the full crowdsec overview →
About WhatWeb
WhatWeb is a free, GPL 2.0 licensed web scanner written in Ruby that identifies the technologies powering a website — content management systems, blogging platforms, analytics packages, JavaScript libraries, web servers and embedded devices — and it is built for penetration testers, security analysts and network defenders who need to answer the question, "What is that Website?"
read the full WhatWeb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crowdsec or WhatWeb more popular?
crowdsec has 14,956 GitHub stars and WhatWeb has 6,855. crowdsec has the larger community by that measure.
Are crowdsec and WhatWeb free?
Both are open source. crowdsec is licensed under MIT and WhatWeb under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crowdsec and WhatWeb?
crowdsec is written in Go and WhatWeb in Ruby. 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 WhatWeb?
Choose crowdsec if you want the larger community (14,956 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose WhatWeb if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.