head to head · open source
lighthouse vs fossology
lighthouse has 30,788 GitHub stars, 9,765 forks, 470 open issues and last shipped today. fossology has 1,032 stars, 644 forks, 290 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lighthouse leads on adoption by 2,883% (30,788 vs 1,032 stars). lighthouse is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0; fossology is written in HTML under GPL-2.0. lighthouse has attracted 32% as many forks as stars, fossology 62%. lighthouse 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
| lighthouse | fossology | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.8K | ⑂ 644 |
| 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 fossology if
- You want the fossology feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and fossology 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 fossology
FOSSology About FOSSology is an open source license compliance software system and toolkit. As a toolkit, you can run license, copyright, and export control scans from the command line. As a system, a database and web UI are provided to give you a compliance workflow. In one click you can generate an SPDX file or a ReadMe with all the copyrights notices from your software. FOSSology deduplication means that you can scan an entire distro, rescan a new version, and only the changed files will get rescanned. This is a big time saver for large projects. Check out Who Uses FOSSology! FOSSology does not give legal advi…
read the full fossology overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lighthouse or fossology more popular?
lighthouse has 30,788 GitHub stars and fossology has 1,032. lighthouse has the larger community by that measure.
Are lighthouse and fossology free?
Both are open source. lighthouse is licensed under Apache-2.0 and fossology under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lighthouse and fossology?
lighthouse is written in JavaScript and fossology in HTML. 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 fossology?
Choose lighthouse if you want the larger community (30,788 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose fossology if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.