head to head · open source
gitleaks vs kala
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars, 2,330 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. kala has 2,155 stars, 191 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 1,320% (30,603 vs 2,155 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| gitleaks | kala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2025-12-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 191 |
| 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 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 [!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 kala
Kala Kala is a simplistic, modern, and performant job scheduler written in Go. Features: Single binary No dependencies JSON over HTTP API Job Stats Configurable Retries Scheduling with ISO 8601 Date and Interval notation Dependent Jobs Persistent with several database drivers Web UI Note that it is not battle tested. Use at your own risk. Kala was inspired by the desire for a simpler Chronos (developed by Airbnb). Kala is Chronos for the rest of us. If you need fault tolerance, distributed features, massive scale, then I recommend checking out Chronos. This is designed to be the Chronos for start ups. Installing…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Orchestration & Scheduling projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Orchestration & Scheduling field.
Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or kala more popular?
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars and kala has 2,155. 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 (30,603 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.