head to head · open source
tfsec vs dep-scan
tfsec has 7,061 GitHub stars, 560 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. dep-scan has 1,324 stars, 140 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. tfsec leads on adoption by 433% (7,061 vs 1,324 stars). tfsec is written in Go under MIT; dep-scan is written in Python under MIT. tfsec has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, dep-scan 11%. dep-scan was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (compliance, devsecops), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| tfsec | dep-scan | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.1K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-03-25 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 560 | ⑂ 140 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick tfsec if
- You weight community size — 7.1K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dep-scan if
- You want the dep-scan feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and dep-scan fits your workflow better
About tfsec
📣 tfsec to Trivy Migration As part of our goal to provide a comprehensive open source security solution for all, we have been consolidating all of our scanning related efforts in one place, and that is Trivy. Over the past year, tfsec has laid the foundations to Trivy's IaC & misconfigurations scanning capabilities, including Terraform scanning, which has been natively supported in Trivy for a long time now. Going forward we want to encourage the tfsec community to transition over to Trivy. Moving to Trivy gives you the same excellent Terraform scanning engine, with some extra benefits: 1. Access to more…
read the full tfsec overview →
About dep-scan
Introduction OWASP dep scan is a next generation security and risk audit tool based on known vulnerabilities, advisories, and license limitations for project dependencies. Both local repositories and container images are supported as the input, and the tool is ideal for integration with ASPM/VM platforms and in CI environments. Contents Features Precise reachable data flows Reachability matrix Rust reachability (via rusi) Go reachability (via golem) .NET reachability (via dosai) JVM, JavaScript, Python, and PHP reachability (via atom) Vulnerability Data sources Linux distros Quick Start Scanning projects locally…
read the full dep-scan overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Compliance & Risk Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Compliance & Risk Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is tfsec or dep-scan more popular?
tfsec has 7,061 GitHub stars and dep-scan has 1,324. tfsec has the larger community by that measure.
Are tfsec and dep-scan free?
Both are open source. tfsec is licensed under MIT and dep-scan under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between tfsec and dep-scan?
tfsec is written in Go and dep-scan in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, tfsec or dep-scan?
Choose tfsec if you want the larger community (7,061 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose dep-scan if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.