head to head · open source
PayloadsAllTheThings vs cve
PayloadsAllTheThings has 81,153 GitHub stars, 17,408 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. cve has 8,087 stars, 977 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. PayloadsAllTheThings leads on adoption by 903% (81,153 vs 8,087 stars). PayloadsAllTheThings is written in Python under MIT; cve is written in HTML under MIT. PayloadsAllTheThings has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, cve 12%. cve was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacking, penetration-testing), 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
| PayloadsAllTheThings | cve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 81K | ★ 8.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-08-27 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 17K | ⑂ 977 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PayloadsAllTheThings if
- You weight community size — 81K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cve if
- You want the cve feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and cve fits your workflow better
About PayloadsAllTheThings
Payloads All The Things is an MIT licensed, community maintained collection of web application security payloads, bypass techniques and pentest methodology notes, written for penetration testers, bug bounty hunters, CTF players and red teamers who need a reference they can copy from during an engagement.
read the full PayloadsAllTheThings overview →
About cve
cve is an automatically generated, MIT licensed repository from Trickest that gathers almost every publicly available CVE Proof of Concept and publishes it as browsable markdown files, made for penetration testers, red teams and vulnerability researchers who need to find public exploits for a given identifier.
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Frequently asked questions
Is PayloadsAllTheThings or cve more popular?
PayloadsAllTheThings has 81,153 GitHub stars and cve has 8,087. PayloadsAllTheThings has the larger community by that measure.
Are PayloadsAllTheThings and cve free?
Both are open source. PayloadsAllTheThings is licensed under MIT and cve under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PayloadsAllTheThings and cve?
PayloadsAllTheThings is written in Python and cve in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, PayloadsAllTheThings or cve?
Choose PayloadsAllTheThings if you want the larger community (81,153 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cve if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.