head to head · open source
lynis vs Audit.NET
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Audit.NET has 2,663 stars, 327 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. lynis leads on adoption by 524% (16,611 vs 2,663 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; Audit.NET is written in C# under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Audit.NET 12%. lynis 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
| lynis | Audit.NET | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 327 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lynis if
- You weight community size — 17K 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 Audit.NET if
- You want the Audit.NET feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and Audit.NET fits your workflow better
About lynis
[Documentation] [Documentation]: Do you like this software? Star the project and become a stargazer. lynis Lynis Security auditing and hardening tool, for UNIX based systems. Lynis is a security auditing tool for systems based on UNIX like Linux, macOS, BSD, and others. It performs an in depth security scan and runs on the system itself. The primary goal is to test security defenses and provide tips for further system hardening . It will also scan for general system information, vulnerable software packages, and possible configuration issues. Lynis was commonly used by system administrators and auditors to…
read the full lynis overview →
About Audit.NET
Audit.NET USAGE OUTPUT CUSTOMIZATION DATA PROVIDERS CREATION POLICY CONFIGURATION EXTENSIONS Issues Build status Quality gate Donations Docs An extensible framework to audit executing operations in .NET and .NET Core. Generate audit logs with evidence for reconstruction and examination of activities that have affected specific operations or procedures. With Audit.NET, you can generate detailed tracking information for executed operations. It captures environmental data such as the caller's user ID, machine name, method name, exceptions, and execution time. The framework also provides an extensible mechanism to…
read the full Audit.NET overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or Audit.NET more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and Audit.NET has 2,663. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and Audit.NET free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Audit.NET under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and Audit.NET?
lynis is written in Shell and Audit.NET in C#. 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 Audit.NET?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Audit.NET if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.