head to head · open source
lynis vs HardeningKitty
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. HardeningKitty has 1,876 stars, 217 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. lynis leads on adoption by 785% (16,611 vs 1,876 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; HardeningKitty is written in PowerShell under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, HardeningKitty 12%. lynis was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hardening), 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 | HardeningKitty | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | PowerShell |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-07-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 217 |
| 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 HardeningKitty if
- You want the HardeningKitty feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PowerShell
- You evaluated both and HardeningKitty 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 HardeningKitty
HardeningKitty This is the stable version of HardeningKitty from the Windows Hardening Project by Michael Schneider. The stable version of HardeningKitty is signed with the code signing certificate of scip AG . Since this is the stable version, we do not accept pull requests in this repo, please send them to the development repo . HardeningKitty supports hardening of a Windows system. The configuration of the system is retrieved and assessed using a finding list. In addition, the system can be hardened according to predefined values. HardeningKitty reads settings from the registry and uses other modules to read…
read the full HardeningKitty overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or HardeningKitty more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and HardeningKitty has 1,876. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and HardeningKitty free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and HardeningKitty under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and HardeningKitty?
lynis is written in Shell and HardeningKitty in PowerShell. 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 HardeningKitty?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose HardeningKitty if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.