head to head · open source
lynis vs kyverno
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kyverno has 8,159 stars, 1,596 forks, 703 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 100% (16,355 vs 8,159 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; kyverno is written in Go under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, kyverno 20%. kyverno 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 | kyverno | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 kyverno if
- You want the kyverno feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kyverno 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 kyverno
Kyverno is a Kubernetes native policy engine that lets platform engineering teams define security, compliance, automation, and governance rules as policy as code, using the Kubernetes tools they already run rather than a separate policy language.
read the full kyverno overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or kyverno more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and kyverno has 8,159. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and kyverno free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and kyverno under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and kyverno?
lynis is written in Shell and kyverno 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 kyverno?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kyverno if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.