head to head · open source
gitleaks vs harmonist
gitleaks has 29,396 GitHub stars, 2,236 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. harmonist has 2,257 stars, 206 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. gitleaks leads on adoption by 1,202% (29,396 vs 2,257 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; harmonist is written in Python under MIT. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, harmonist 9%. 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 | harmonist | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-06-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 206 |
| 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 harmonist if
- You want the harmonist feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and harmonist 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 harmonist
harmonist is an MIT licensed, dependency free Python framework that adds multi agent orchestration and mechanically enforced protocol to AI coding assistants such as Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Windsurf, and Aider, and it serves individual developers and teams who need agent workflows to obey engineering rules rather than merely be asked to follow them.
read the full harmonist overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or harmonist more popular?
gitleaks has 29,396 GitHub stars and harmonist has 2,257. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and harmonist free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and harmonist under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and harmonist?
gitleaks is written in Go and harmonist in Python. 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 harmonist?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,396 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose harmonist if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.