head to head · open source
gitleaks vs bolt
gitleaks has 29,368 GitHub stars, 2,237 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. bolt has 558 stars, 224 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 5,163% (29,368 vs 558 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; bolt is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, bolt 40%. bolt 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 | bolt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 558 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 224 |
| 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 bolt if
- You want the bolt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and bolt 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 bolt
Bolt is an open source, agentless orchestration tool that automates the manual work of maintaining infrastructure on demand or as part of a larger orchestration workflow, and it is built for infrastructure and operations engineers who manage Linux, Windows, and macOS targets.
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or bolt more popular?
gitleaks has 29,368 GitHub stars and bolt has 558. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and bolt free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and bolt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and bolt?
gitleaks is written in Go and bolt in Ruby. 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 bolt?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,368 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose bolt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.