head to head · open source
lynis vs opa
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. opa has 12,244 stars, 1,685 forks, 310 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 34% (16,355 vs 12,244 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; opa is written in Go under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, opa 14%. opa 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 | opa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 12K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 opa if
- You want the opa 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 opa 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 opa
Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general purpose policy engine that enables unified, context aware policy enforcement across the entire stack. It lives in the cloud native ecosystem as a graduated project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation landscape, and it is written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. Policy is expressed declaratively in the Rego language, and the project ships alongside a CLI, an HTTP REST API, a Go SDK, and editor tooling rather than as a single binary alone. The repository has been active for roughly eleven years, with 12,234 stars, 1,679 forks, and a last push dated 15 Septe…
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or opa more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and opa has 12,244. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and opa free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and opa under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and opa?
lynis is written in Shell and opa 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 opa?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose opa if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.