head to head · open source
gitleaks vs sidequest
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars, 2,330 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. sidequest has 1,020 stars, 31 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 2,900% (30,603 vs 1,020 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 3%. 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 | ★ 31K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 31 |
| 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 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 [!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]…
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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…
read the full sidequest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or sidequest more popular?
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars and sidequest has 1,020. 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 (30,603 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sidequest if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.