head to head · open source
lynis vs flashlight
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. flashlight has 1,611 stars, 51 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lynis leads on adoption by 931% (16,611 vs 1,611 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; flashlight is written in TypeScript under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, flashlight 3%. flashlight 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 | flashlight | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 51 |
| 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 flashlight if
- You want the flashlight feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and flashlight 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 flashlight
Get a performance score for your app 🔦 Flashlight generates a performance score for your Android app, aggregating different metrics. (📱 iOS support is also in the works) 🙅 No setup required in your app 🚀 Measure performance even on production apps ✨ Generates beautiful reports (like this Flatlist/Flashlist comparison) With Flashlight 🔦, you can either: Upload an app and get your performance score on app.flashlight.dev Or use the CLI: flashlight measure : quickly audit your perf with real time measures flashlight test : automate your measures with e2e performance testing over several iterations flashlight…
read the full flashlight overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or flashlight more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and flashlight has 1,611. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and flashlight free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and flashlight under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and flashlight?
lynis is written in Shell and flashlight in TypeScript. 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 flashlight?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose flashlight if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.