head to head · open source
garak vs Dark-Moon
garak has 9,888 GitHub stars, 1,443 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Dark-Moon has 1,206 stars, 204 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. garak leads on adoption by 720% (9,888 vs 1,206 stars). garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Dark-Moon is written in Python under GPL-3.0. garak has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, Dark-Moon 17%. garak was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm-security), 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
| garak | Dark-Moon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.9K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 204 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick garak if
- You weight community size — 9.9K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Dark-Moon if
- You want the Dark-Moon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Dark-Moon fits your workflow better
About garak
garak, LLM vulnerability scanner Generative AI Red teaming & Assessment Kit garak checks if an LLM can be made to fail in a way we don't want. garak probes for hallucination, data leakage, prompt injection, misinformation, toxicity generation, jailbreaks, and many other weaknesses. If you know nmap or msf / Metasploit Framework, garak does somewhat similar things to them, but for LLMs. garak focuses on ways of making an LLM or dialog system fail. It combines static, dynamic, and adaptive probes to explore this. garak 's a free tool. We love developing it and are always interested in adding functionality to…
read the full garak overview →
About Dark-Moon
DarkMoon Open source autonomous AI penetration testing platform that finds and proves every vulnerability with a real exploit, on a local model ⭐ Star DarkMoon · 🚀 Quick Start · 📊 Benchmark · 🔒 Darkmoon Pro · ▶️ Watch the demo (Pro) DarkMoon is autonomous AI penetration testing for your own infrastructure. Point it at an authorized target and it runs the whole assessment on its own, then returns proof for every finding. 🟢 Truly open source. GPLv3 and self hosted, every agent's methodology is plain Markdown you can read, diff and fork. 🎯 Finds AND proves. Each vulnerability ships with the exact command, the…
read the full Dark-Moon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is garak or Dark-Moon more popular?
garak has 9,888 GitHub stars and Dark-Moon has 1,206. garak has the larger community by that measure.
Are garak and Dark-Moon free?
Both are open source. garak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Dark-Moon under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between garak and Dark-Moon?
garak is written in Python and Dark-Moon 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, garak or Dark-Moon?
Choose garak if you want the larger community (9,888 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Dark-Moon if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.