head to head · open source
gitleaks vs atmos
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars, 2,330 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. atmos has 1,409 stars, 197 forks, 289 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitleaks leads on adoption by 2,072% (30,603 vs 1,409 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; atmos is written in Go under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, atmos 14%. atmos was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cli), 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
| gitleaks | atmos | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 197 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gitleaks if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick atmos if
- You want the atmos 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 atmos fits your workflow better
About gitleaks
Gitleaks [!WARNING] Gitleaks is feature complete. I'm not merging new features into Gitleaks. Future releases will be security patches only. I'm shifting my focus to Betterleaks [license]: ./LICENSE [badge license]: [go docs badge]: [go docs]: [badge build]: [build]: [go report card badge]: [go report card]: [dockerhub]: [dockerhub badge]: [gitleaks action]: [gitleaks badge]: [![GitHub Action Test][badge build]][build] [![Docker Hub][dockerhub badge]][dockerhub] [![Gitleaks Action][gitleaks badge]][gitleaks action] [![GoDoc][go docs badge]][go docs] [![GoReportCard][go report card badge]][go report card]…
read the full gitleaks overview →
About atmos
Run your infrastructure anywhere. Atmos is the open source runtime for infrastructure — it builds, authenticates, and ships Terraform, OpenTofu, Kubernetes, Helm, and containers the same way on your laptop, in CI, and with AI agents. Auth, secrets, vendoring, caching, the toolchain, workflows, and CI are built in. Point every environment at the same reusable root modules and treat the rest as configuration. Stop stringing together 25 tools. Run it on your laptop. Run it the same in CI. Run it with agents. Everything is open source and free. [!TIP] You can try out atmos directly in your browser using GitHub…
read the full atmos overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or atmos more popular?
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars and atmos has 1,409. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and atmos free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and atmos under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and atmos?
gitleaks is written in Go and atmos 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, gitleaks or atmos?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (30,603 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose atmos if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.