head to head · open source
garak vs pentest-ai
garak has 9,308 GitHub stars, 1,294 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. pentest-ai has 1,685 stars, 314 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. garak leads on adoption by 452% (9,308 vs 1,685 stars). garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0; pentest-ai is written in Python under MIT. garak has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, pentest-ai 19%. garak 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
| garak | pentest-ai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.3K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 314 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick garak if
- You weight community size — 9.3K 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 pentest-ai if
- You want the pentest-ai feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pentest-ai fits your workflow better
About garak
garak is a free, Apache 2.0 command line vulnerability scanner for large language models that probes generative AI systems for hallucination, data leakage, prompt injection, misinformation, toxicity generation, and jailbreaks, and it is aimed at security engineers, red teamers, and AI developers who need to test the models they ship.
read the full garak overview →
About pentest-ai
Pentest AI is an open source Python project that connects an AI client or model to a penetration testing workflow. It belongs to the AI security and application security ecosystem, and it is distributed under the MIT license. The project is published as ptai on PyPI and can be used through MCP, the CLI, or CI.
read the full pentest-ai overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is garak or pentest-ai more popular?
garak has 9,308 GitHub stars and pentest-ai has 1,685. garak has the larger community by that measure.
Are garak and pentest-ai free?
Both are open source. garak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pentest-ai under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between garak and pentest-ai?
garak is written in Python and pentest-ai 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 pentest-ai?
Choose garak if you want the larger community (9,308 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pentest-ai if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.