head to head · open source
PentestGPT vs cve
PentestGPT has 15,574 GitHub stars, 2,713 forks, 81 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. cve has 8,087 stars, 977 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. PentestGPT leads on adoption by 93% (15,574 vs 8,087 stars). PentestGPT is written in Python under MIT; cve is written in HTML under MIT. PentestGPT has attracted 17% 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 1 topic tag (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
| PentestGPT | cve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 8.1K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-07-14 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 977 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PentestGPT if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 PentestGPT
PentestGPT is an MIT licensed Python framework that uses large language models to run automated penetration tests and CTF challenges, aimed at penetration testers, security engineers and CTF players who want an agent to drive the tooling rather than working through it by hand.
read the full PentestGPT 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 PentestGPT or cve more popular?
PentestGPT has 15,574 GitHub stars and cve has 8,087. PentestGPT has the larger community by that measure.
Are PentestGPT and cve free?
Both are open source. PentestGPT is licensed under MIT and cve under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PentestGPT and cve?
PentestGPT 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, PentestGPT or cve?
Choose PentestGPT if you want the larger community (15,574 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cve if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.