head to head · open source
lynis vs checkov
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. checkov has 9,127 stars, 1,452 forks, 170 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 82% (16,611 vs 9,127 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; checkov is written in Python under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, checkov 16%. checkov was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (compliance, devops), 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 | checkov | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 9.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 checkov if
- You want the checkov feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and checkov 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 checkov
Checkov is a static code analysis tool for infrastructure as code (IaC) and also a software composition analysis (SCA) tool for images and open source packages. It scans cloud infrastructure provisioned using Terraform, Terraform plan, Cloudformation, AWS SAM, Kubernetes, Helm charts, Kustomize, Dockerfile, Serverless, Bicep, OpenAPI, ARM Templates, or OpenTofu and detects security and compliance misconfigurations using graph based scanning. It performs Software Composition Analysis (SCA) scanning which is a scan of open source packages and images for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). Checkov also…
read the full checkov overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or checkov more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and checkov has 9,127. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and checkov free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and checkov under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and checkov?
lynis is written in Shell and checkov 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 checkov?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose checkov if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.