head to head · open source
lynis vs databunker
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. databunker has 1,494 stars, 101 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. lynis leads on adoption by 1,012% (16,611 vs 1,494 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; databunker is written in Go under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, databunker 7%. databunker was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (compliance, gdpr), 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 | databunker | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 databunker if
- You want the databunker feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and databunker 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 databunker
Databunker Databunker is a self hosted, GDPR compliant, Go based tool for secure personal records tokenization and storage PII/PHI/KYC: Databunker intro 💣 The Big Problem with Traditional Database Encryption Traditional database encryption solutions often provide a false sense of security. While they may encrypt data at rest, they leave critical vulnerabilities: Encryption alone isn’t enough: Most vendors offer only disk block encryption, ignoring API level encryption Vulnerable GraphQL Queries: Unfiltered queries can expose unencrypted data to attackers SQL Injection Risks: Attackers can retrieve plaintext…
read the full databunker overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or databunker more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and databunker has 1,494. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and databunker free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and databunker under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and databunker?
lynis is written in Shell and databunker 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 databunker?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose databunker if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.