head to head · open source
thc-hydra vs cve
thc-hydra has 12,300 GitHub stars, 2,670 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. cve has 8,087 stars, 977 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. thc-hydra leads on adoption by 52% (12,300 vs 8,087 stars). thc-hydra is written in C under AGPL-3.0; cve is written in HTML under MIT. thc-hydra has attracted 22% 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
| thc-hydra | cve | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 8.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | C | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-07-30 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 977 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick thc-hydra if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- 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 thc-hydra
Hydra is an AGPL 3.0 licensed, C based login cracker that attacks dozens of network protocols in parallel, built for security researchers and penetration testing consultants who need to demonstrate how easily a remote system can be reached with weak credentials.
read the full thc-hydra 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 thc-hydra or cve more popular?
thc-hydra has 12,300 GitHub stars and cve has 8,087. thc-hydra has the larger community by that measure.
Are thc-hydra and cve free?
Both are open source. thc-hydra is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cve under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between thc-hydra and cve?
thc-hydra is written in C 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, thc-hydra or cve?
Choose thc-hydra if you want the larger community (12,300 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cve if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.