head to head · open source
lynis vs ort
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. ort has 2,117 stars, 393 forks, 324 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 685% (16,611 vs 2,117 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; ort is written in Kotlin under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ort 19%. ort 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 | ort | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 393 |
| 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 ort if
- You want the ort feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and ort 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 ort
[![Slack][1]][2] [![Static Analysis][3]][4] [![Build and Test][5]][6] [![Code coverage][7]][8] [![REUSE status][9]][10] [![OpenSSF Best Practices][11]][12] [![OpenSSF Scorecard][13]][14] [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: [13]: [14]: Introduction The OSS Review Toolkit (ORT) is a FOSS policy automation and orchestration toolkit that you can use to manage your (open source) software dependencies in a strategic, safe and efficient manner. You can use it to: Generate CycloneDX, SPDX SBOMs, or custom FOSS attribution documentation for your software project Automate your FOSS policy using…
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or ort more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and ort has 2,117. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and ort free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ort under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and ort?
lynis is written in Shell and ort in Kotlin. 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 ort?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ort if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.