head to head · open source
sops vs headlamp
sops has 23,163 GitHub stars, 1,082 forks, 446 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. headlamp has 7,310 stars, 1,112 forks, 1,422 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. sops leads on adoption by 217% (23,163 vs 7,310 stars). sops is written in Go under MPL-2.0; headlamp is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. sops has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, headlamp 15%. sops was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), 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
| sops | headlamp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 7.3K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick sops if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick headlamp if
- You want the headlamp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and headlamp fits your workflow better
About sops
SOPS, short for Secrets OPerationS, is an editor of encrypted files written in Go and released under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0. It handles YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats, and it encrypts those files using AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HuaweiCloud KMS, age, or PGP. The project lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem: it started at Mozilla in 2015, was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2023, and is now a CNCF Sandbox project under a new group of maintainers. It carries 23,121 stars and 1,080 forks, with documentation hosted at getsops.io.
About headlamp
Headlamp is an Apache 2.0 licensed, vendor independent Kubernetes web UI written in TypeScript that runs either inside a cluster or locally as a desktop application, and it is built for platform engineers, cluster operators, and developers who need to inspect and change Kubernetes resources through a graphical interface.
read the full headlamp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is sops or headlamp more popular?
sops has 23,163 GitHub stars and headlamp has 7,310. sops has the larger community by that measure.
Are sops and headlamp free?
Both are open source. sops is licensed under MPL-2.0 and headlamp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sops and headlamp?
sops is written in Go and headlamp 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, sops or headlamp?
Choose sops if you want the larger community (23,163 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose headlamp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.