head to head · open source
lighthouse vs black-hat-rust
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars, 9,765 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped yesterday. black-hat-rust has 4,403 stars, 440 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. lighthouse leads on adoption by 599% (30,785 vs 4,403 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; black-hat-rust is written in Rust under MIT. lighthouse has attracted 32% as many forks as stars, black-hat-rust 10%. lighthouse was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (audit), 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
| lighthouse | black-hat-rust | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 440 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lighthouse if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick black-hat-rust if
- You want the black-hat-rust feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and black-hat-rust fits your workflow better
About lighthouse
Lighthouse is an open source, automated auditing tool for web applications and web pages. It analyzes a target URL and collects modern performance metrics alongside insights into developer best practices, producing a structured report that scores and explains what it finds. The project lives in the JavaScript ecosystem, is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, and is maintained under the GoogleChrome organization. It has been developed for roughly eleven years and is published to npm as the lighthouse package.
read the full lighthouse overview →
About black-hat-rust
Black Hat Rust is an applied offensive security book written in the Rust programming language and published under an MIT licensed repository. The project positions itself as a guide to the reasons and methods behind building offensive tools, rather than a general introduction to Rust or a tutorial for existing tools such as sqlmap and Metasploit. Its topics cover reconnaissance, exploitation, phishing, red team work, bug bounty hunting, auditing, command and control, and implant development.
read the full black-hat-rust overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or black-hat-rust more popular?
lighthouse has 30,785 GitHub stars and black-hat-rust has 4,403. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and black-hat-rust free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and black-hat-rust under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and black-hat-rust?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and black-hat-rust in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, lighthouse or black-hat-rust?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (30,785 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose black-hat-rust if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.