head to head · open source
gitleaks vs haystack
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars, 2,330 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. haystack has 26,913 stars, 3,384 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitleaks leads on adoption by 14% (30,603 vs 26,913 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; haystack is written in Python under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, haystack 13%. haystack 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 | haystack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-28 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.3K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| 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 haystack if
- You want the haystack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and haystack 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 haystack
🎉🎊✨ Haystack 3.0 is out! ✨🎊🎉 Read the announcement here! 🥳 🎈 🎆 🪅 🎇 🍾 🥂 🎁 🌈 Haystack is an open source AI orchestration framework for building production ready LLM applications in Python. Design modular pipelines and agent workflows with explicit control over retrieval, routing, memory, and generation. Build scalable RAG systems, multimodal applications, semantic search, question answering, and autonomous agents, all in a transparent architecture that lets you experiment, customize deeply, and deploy with confidence. Table of Contents Installation Documentation Features Haystack Enterprise: Support &…
read the full haystack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or haystack more popular?
gitleaks has 30,603 GitHub stars and haystack has 26,913. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and haystack free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and haystack under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and haystack?
gitleaks is written in Go and haystack 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 haystack?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (30,603 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose haystack if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.