head to head · open source
ECC vs shellcheck
ECC has 263,932 GitHub stars, 39,482 forks, 210 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. shellcheck has 40,060 stars, 1,946 forks, 1,137 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. ECC leads on adoption by 559% (263,932 vs 40,060 stars). ECC is written in JavaScript under MIT; shellcheck is written in Haskell under GPL-3.0. ECC has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, shellcheck 5%. ECC was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (developer-tools), 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
| ECC | shellcheck | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 264K | ★ 40K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 39K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ECC if
- You weight community size — 264K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick shellcheck if
- You want the shellcheck feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and shellcheck fits your workflow better
About ECC
ECC is an MIT licensed open source agent harness performance optimization system that gives AI coding agents a coordinated engineering workflow — plan, test, implement, review, verify, remember, improve — for developers working in Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, and other harnesses.
About shellcheck
ShellCheck is a GPLv3 static analysis tool written in Haskell that gives warnings and suggestions for bash and sh shell scripts, aimed at everyone from beginners tripping over cryptic shell error messages to advanced users guarding otherwise working scripts against future corner cases.
read the full shellcheck overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ECC or shellcheck more popular?
ECC has 263,932 GitHub stars and shellcheck has 40,060. ECC has the larger community by that measure.
Are ECC and shellcheck free?
Both are open source. ECC is licensed under MIT and shellcheck under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ECC and shellcheck?
ECC is written in JavaScript and shellcheck in Haskell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ECC or shellcheck?
Choose ECC if you want the larger community (263,932 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose shellcheck if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.