head to head · open source
gitleaks vs Bacalhau
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars, 2,236 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Bacalhau has 871 stars, 101 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 3,271% (29,364 vs 871 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; Bacalhau is written in Go under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Bacalhau 12%. Bacalhau 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
| gitleaks | Bacalhau | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 871 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 101 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gitleaks if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Bacalhau if
- You want the Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau fits your workflow better
About gitleaks
Gitleaks is an MIT licensed, Go based command line tool that detects hardcoded secrets such as passwords, API keys, and tokens in git repositories, files, and standard input, and it serves developers and security teams that need to keep credentials out of source control.
read the full gitleaks overview →
About Bacalhau
Bacalhau is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed distributed compute orchestrator written in Go that brings computation to the data rather than moving data to computation, built for data engineers, data scientists, bioinformatics teams and infrastructure operators who run batch, edge and cross organizational workloads at petabyte scale.
read the full Bacalhau overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or Bacalhau more popular?
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars and Bacalhau has 871. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and Bacalhau free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and Bacalhau under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and Bacalhau?
gitleaks is written in Go and Bacalhau 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 Bacalhau?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,364 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Bacalhau if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.