head to head · open source
lynis vs openscap
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. openscap has 1,816 stars, 451 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. lynis leads on adoption by 801% (16,355 vs 1,816 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; openscap is written in XSLT under LGPL-2.1. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, openscap 25%. lynis 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 | openscap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | Shell | XSLT |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 451 |
| 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 openscap if
- You want the openscap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches XSLT
- You evaluated both and openscap 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 openscap
OpenSCAP is a NIST Certified SCAP 1.2 toolkit for security compliance work in the SCAP ecosystem. It centers on the oscap command line tool, which lets users load, scan, validate, edit, and export SCAP documents. The project covers compliance, CPE, data streams, OVAL, scanning, and XCCDF, so it can serve as a core tool for checking systems against machine readable security benchmarks.
read the full openscap overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or openscap more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and openscap has 1,816. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and openscap free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and openscap under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and openscap?
lynis is written in Shell and openscap in XSLT. 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 openscap?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose openscap if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.