head to head · open source
garak vs vestige
garak has 9,503 GitHub stars, 1,350 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vestige has 648 stars, 71 forks, 46 open issues and last shipped today. garak leads on adoption by 1,367% (9,503 vs 648 stars). garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0; vestige is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. garak has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, vestige 11%. vestige 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 | vestige | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.5K | ★ 648 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 71 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick garak if
- You weight community size — 9.5K 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 vestige if
- You want the vestige feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and vestige 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 vestige
Vestige is a local, deterministic safety kernel and fail closed runtime firewall for AI agents that records every memory write and agent action in a signed, append only log called Strata, so you can see exactly what your agent did and why.
read the full vestige overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is garak or vestige more popular?
garak has 9,503 GitHub stars and vestige has 648. garak has the larger community by that measure.
Are garak and vestige free?
Both are open source. garak is licensed under Apache-2.0 and vestige under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between garak and vestige?
garak is written in Python and vestige in Rust. 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 vestige?
Choose garak if you want the larger community (9,503 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose vestige if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.