head to head · open source
gitleaks vs hof
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars, 2,330 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. hof has 615 stars, 48 forks, 74 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 4,876% (30,603 vs 615 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; hof is written in Go under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, hof 8%. gitleaks 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 | hof | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 615 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-05-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 48 |
| 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 hof if
- You want the hof 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 hof 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 hof
hof the higher order framework A tool that unifies data models, schemas, code generation, and a task engine. hof is a CLI tool you add to your workflow. Foundation in CUE Deterministic and Agentic code generation Data models that can evolve and be input to code generation Task engine based on cue/flow Agent servers and VS Code extension hof uses CUE to power the DX and implementation. We believe CUE is a great language for specifying schemas, configuration, and generally for writing anything declarative or this is a source of truth. It has good theory and comes from the same people that brought us containers…
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or hof more popular?
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars and hof has 615. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and hof free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and hof under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and hof?
gitleaks is written in Go and hof 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 hof?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (30,603 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose hof if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.