head to head · open source
gitleaks vs sidequest
gitleaks has 29,368 GitHub stars, 2,237 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. sidequest has 1,015 stars, 25 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 2,793% (29,368 vs 1,015 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; sidequest is written in TypeScript under LGPL-3.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, sidequest 2%. gitleaks 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 | sidequest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 25 |
| 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 sidequest if
- You want the sidequest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sidequest 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 sidequest
Sidequest Sidequest is a Redis free background job processor for Node.js . It persists jobs in the database you already run (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB), so you get durable, distributed background processing without standing up Redis. It is a production grade BullMQ and pg boss alternative, with a built in web dashboard. At a glance Runtime: Node.js ( = 22.6.0). Does not run on Bun yet. Storage: PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite, or MongoDB. Jobs are durable and persisted in your database , not in memory. SQLite is recommended for local development and tests. Distribution: runs across multiple nodes against on…
read the full sidequest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or sidequest more popular?
gitleaks has 29,368 GitHub stars and sidequest has 1,015. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and sidequest free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and sidequest under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and sidequest?
gitleaks is written in Go and sidequest in TypeScript. 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 sidequest?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,368 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sidequest if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.