head to head · open source
garak vs pipelock
garak has 9,850 GitHub stars, 1,439 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. pipelock has 983 stars, 113 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. garak leads on adoption by 902% (9,850 vs 983 stars). garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0; pipelock is written in Go under Apache-2.0. garak has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, pipelock 11%. pipelock 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 | pipelock | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.8K | ★ 983 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 113 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick garak if
- You weight community size — 9.8K 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 pipelock if
- You want the pipelock feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pipelock 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 pipelock
Open source AI agent firewall for Verifiable Egress Control . Pipelock sits between AI agents and the network. It inspects mediated HTTP, WebSocket, MCP, and A2A traffic, plus CONNECT tunnel contents when TLS interception is enabled, for secret exfiltration, prompt injection, SSRF, tool poisoning, and risky tool call chains. Plain CONNECT without interception is scanned at the hostname and URL level. Configured MCP upstreams are an exception to private address SSRF blocking: local/private servers are allowed, but cloud metadata endpoints remain blocked. Pipelock emits mediator signed action receipts over content…
read the full pipelock overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is garak or pipelock more popular?
garak has 9,850 GitHub stars and pipelock has 983. garak has the larger community by that measure.
Are garak and pipelock free?
Both are open source. garak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pipelock under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between garak and pipelock?
garak is written in Python and pipelock in Go. 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 pipelock?
Choose garak if you want the larger community (9,850 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pipelock if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.