head to head · open source
gitleaks vs werf
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars, 2,236 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. werf has 4,721 stars, 239 forks, 30 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitleaks leads on adoption by 522% (29,364 vs 4,721 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; werf is written in Go under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, werf 5%. werf was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ci-cd, 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 | werf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 239 |
| 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 werf if
- You want the werf 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 werf 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 werf
werf is a CNCF Sandbox command line tool, written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0, that implements full cycle CI/CD to Kubernetes for teams that already build container images and deploy with Helm but want one tool to carry an application from build through deploy, release artifacts and container registry cleanup.
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or werf more popular?
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars and werf has 4,721. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and werf free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and werf under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and werf?
gitleaks is written in Go and werf 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 werf?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,364 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose werf if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.