head to head · open source
lynis vs laravel-auditing
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. laravel-auditing has 3,464 stars, 409 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. lynis leads on adoption by 372% (16,355 vs 3,464 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; laravel-auditing is written in PHP under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, laravel-auditing 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 (auditing), 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 | laravel-auditing | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-07-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 409 |
| 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 laravel-auditing if
- You want the laravel-auditing feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and laravel-auditing 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 laravel-auditing
Laravel Auditing is a PHP package for the Laravel ecosystem that records the change log from Eloquent models. Its topic list also identifies Lumen as a relevant environment. The package is MIT licensed, and its active 14.x line supports Illuminate 11.x.x through 13.x.x on PHP 8.2 or later.
read the full laravel-auditing overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or laravel-auditing more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and laravel-auditing has 3,464. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and laravel-auditing free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and laravel-auditing under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and laravel-auditing?
lynis is written in Shell and laravel-auditing in PHP. 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 laravel-auditing?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose laravel-auditing if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.