head to head · open source
gitleaks vs kala
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars, 2,236 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. kala has 2,156 stars, 190 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 1,262% (29,364 vs 2,156 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; kala is written in Go under MIT. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, kala 9%. gitleaks was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, golang), 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 | kala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2025-12-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 kala if
- You want the kala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kala 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 kala
Kala is an open source job scheduler written in Go under the MIT license. It sits in the Infrastructure & Operations / Orchestration & Scheduling category and describes itself as a modern service for scheduling jobs. The project ships as a single binary with no external dependencies, exposes a JSON over HTTP API, includes a web UI, and supports persistent storage through several database drivers.
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or kala more popular?
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars and kala has 2,156. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and kala free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and kala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and kala?
gitleaks is written in Go and kala 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 kala?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,364 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.