head to head · open source
lynis vs polaris
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. polaris has 3,399 stars, 230 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 389% (16,611 vs 3,399 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; polaris is written in Go under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, polaris 7%. polaris was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | polaris | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 230 |
| 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 polaris if
- You want the polaris 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 polaris 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 polaris
Polaris is an open source policy engine for Kubernetes Polaris is an open source policy engine for Kubernetes that validates and remediates resource configuration. It includes 30+ built in configuration policies, as well as the ability to build custom policies with JSON Schema. When run on the command line or as a mutating webhook, Polaris can automatically remediate issues based on policy criteria. Polaris can be run in three different modes: As a dashboard Validate Kubernetes resources against policy as code. As an admission controller Automatically reject or modify workloads that don't adhere to your…
read the full polaris overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or polaris more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and polaris has 3,399. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and polaris free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and polaris under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and polaris?
lynis is written in Shell and polaris 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 polaris?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose polaris if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.