head to head · open source
lynis vs ort
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ort has 2,084 stars, 394 forks, 324 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 685% (16,355 vs 2,084 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 | ★ 16K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 394 |
| 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 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
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 ort
ORT is a suite of tools to automate software compliance checks. It is a FOSS policy automation and orchestration toolkit for managing open source software dependencies. The project lives in the open source compliance ecosystem and is listed under Business Software / Compliance & Risk Management. It is written in Kotlin and licensed under Apache 2.0.
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or ort more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and ort has 2,084. 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 (16,355 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.