head to head · open source
lynis vs greenlight
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. greenlight has 2,430 stars, 145 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. lynis leads on adoption by 573% (16,355 vs 2,430 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; greenlight is written in Go under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, greenlight 6%. lynis 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 | greenlight | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 145 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick lynis if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 greenlight if
- You want the greenlight feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and greenlight fits your workflow better
About lynis
Lynis is an agentless, GPL 3.0 security auditing and hardening tool that runs on the UNIX based system itself, built for system administrators, auditors, security officers, and penetration testers who need to assess security defenses and test compliance against standards such as ISO27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA.
read the full lynis overview →
About greenlight
Greenlight is an open source command line compliance scanner for mobile apps that target the Apple App Store and Google Play. It lives in the Go, CLI, mobile, React Native, Expo, iOS, and Android ecosystem, and it reads source code, privacy manifests, Android manifests, Gradle builds, IPA binaries, and App Store Connect metadata.
read the full greenlight overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or greenlight more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and greenlight has 2,430. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and greenlight free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and greenlight under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and greenlight?
lynis is written in Shell and greenlight 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 greenlight?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose greenlight if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.