head to head · open source
shannon vs garak
shannon has 48,205 GitHub stars, 5,529 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. garak has 9,308 stars, 1,294 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. shannon leads on adoption by 418% (48,205 vs 9,308 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0. shannon has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, garak 14%. 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
| shannon | garak | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick shannon if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick garak if
- You want the garak feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and garak fits your workflow better
About shannon
Shannon is an autonomous AI pentester for web applications and APIs that reads an application's source code, identifies attack paths, and executes real exploits so that only vulnerabilities with a working proof of concept are reported, built for AppSec, DevSecOps, and security engineering teams that ship code continuously.
read the full shannon overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or garak more popular?
shannon has 48,205 GitHub stars and garak has 9,308. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and garak free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and garak under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and garak?
shannon is written in TypeScript and garak 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, shannon or garak?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (48,205 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose garak if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.