head to head · open source
lynis vs kyverno
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. kyverno has 8,310 stars, 1,693 forks, 703 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 100% (16,611 vs 8,310 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 | ★ 17K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 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
[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 kyverno
Kyverno Cloud Native Policy Management 🎉 📑 Table of Contents About Kyverno Non Goals Documentation Demos & Tutorials Popular Use Cases Explore the Policy Library Getting Help Contributing Software Bill of Materials Contributors License About Kyverno Kyverno is a Kubernetes native policy engine designed for platform engineering teams. It enables security, compliance, automation, and governance through policy as code. Kyverno can: Validate, mutate, generate, and clean up resources using Kubernetes admission controls and background scans. Verify container image signatures for supply chain security. Operate with…
read the full kyverno overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or kyverno more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and kyverno has 8,310. 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 (16,611 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.