head to head · open source
lynis vs chainloop
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. chainloop has 610 stars, 64 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 2,623% (16,611 vs 610 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; chainloop is written in Go under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, chainloop 10%. chainloop 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 | chainloop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 610 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 64 |
| 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 chainloop if
- You want the chainloop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and chainloop 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 chainloop
Chainloop What is it? Chainloop is an open source evidence store for your Software Supply Chain attestations, Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs), VEX, SARIF, QA reports, and more. With Chainloop, Security, Compliance, and Risk management teams can define security and compliance policies, what evidence and artifacts they want to receive, and where to store them. On the other hand, developers are shielded from all this complexity by being given simple instructions on what to provide when instrumenting their CI/CD pipelines. To learn more about the project motivation please look at our documentation. How does it…
read the full chainloop overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or chainloop more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and chainloop has 610. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and chainloop free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and chainloop under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and chainloop?
lynis is written in Shell and chainloop in Go. 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 chainloop?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose chainloop if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.