head to head · open source
gitleaks vs donutbrowser
gitleaks has 29,396 GitHub stars, 2,236 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. donutbrowser has 3,861 stars, 410 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitleaks leads on adoption by 661% (29,396 vs 3,861 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; donutbrowser is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, donutbrowser 11%. donutbrowser 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
| gitleaks | donutbrowser | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 410 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gitleaks if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick donutbrowser if
- You want the donutbrowser feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and donutbrowser fits your workflow better
About gitleaks
Gitleaks is an MIT licensed, Go based command line tool that detects hardcoded secrets such as passwords, API keys, and tokens in git repositories, files, and standard input, and it serves developers and security teams that need to keep credentials out of source control.
read the full gitleaks overview →
About donutbrowser
Donut Browser is a free, open source anti detect browser written in Rust for anyone who needs many fully isolated browser identities — each with its own fingerprint, cookies, extensions, proxy, and VPN — running from one desktop install, and for the automation engineers and teams who script or sync those profiles.
read the full donutbrowser overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or donutbrowser more popular?
gitleaks has 29,396 GitHub stars and donutbrowser has 3,861. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and donutbrowser free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and donutbrowser under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and donutbrowser?
gitleaks is written in Go and donutbrowser in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gitleaks or donutbrowser?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,396 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose donutbrowser if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.