head to head · open source
lynis vs agent-governance-toolkit
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. agent-governance-toolkit has 6,278 stars, 1,120 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 161% (16,355 vs 6,278 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; agent-governance-toolkit is written in Python under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, agent-governance-toolkit 18%. agent-governance-toolkit was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (compliance), 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
| lynis | agent-governance-toolkit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lynis if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-governance-toolkit if
- You want the agent-governance-toolkit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and agent-governance-toolkit fits your workflow better
About lynis
Lynis is an agentless, GPL 3.0 security auditing and hardening tool that runs on the UNIX based system itself, built for system administrators, auditors, security officers, and penetration testers who need to assess security defenses and test compliance against standards such as ISO27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.
read the full lynis overview →
About agent-governance-toolkit
Agent Governance Toolkit is a Microsoft open source Python toolkit that adds policy enforcement, zero trust identity, execution sandboxing, and reliability engineering to autonomous AI agents, aimed at teams putting tool using or multi agent systems into production under compliance obligations.
read the full agent-governance-toolkit overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or agent-governance-toolkit more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and agent-governance-toolkit has 6,278. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and agent-governance-toolkit free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and agent-governance-toolkit under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and agent-governance-toolkit?
lynis is written in Shell and agent-governance-toolkit 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, lynis or agent-governance-toolkit?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose agent-governance-toolkit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.