head to head · open source
lynis vs licensee
lynis has 16,413 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. licensee has 912 stars, 347 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 1,700% (16,413 vs 912 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; licensee is written in Ruby under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, licensee 38%. licensee 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 | licensee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 912 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 347 |
| 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 licensee if
- You want the licensee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and licensee 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 licensee
Licensee is a Ruby gem and command line tool that automatically determines which open source license a project is distributed under, aimed at developers, compliance teams, and maintainers who need to know what they can and cannot do with a codebase.
read the full licensee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or licensee more popular?
lynis has 16,413 GitHub stars and licensee has 912. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and licensee free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and licensee under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and licensee?
lynis is written in Shell and licensee in Ruby. 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 licensee?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,413 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose licensee if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.