head to head · open source
lynis vs opa
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. opa has 12,423 stars, 1,705 forks, 310 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 34% (16,611 vs 12,423 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 | ★ 17K | ★ 12K |
| 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 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
[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 opa
Open Policy Agent Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general purpose policy engine that enables unified, context aware policy enforcement across the entire stack. OPA is proud to be a graduated project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) landscape. For details read the CNCF announcement. Get started with OPA Write your first Rego policy with the Rego Playground or use it to share your work with others for feedback and support. Have a look at the Access Control examples if you're not sure where to start. Install the VS Code extension to get started locally with live diagnostics, debugging and…
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or opa more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and opa has 12,423. 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 (16,611 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.