head to head · open source
lynis vs rudder
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. rudder has 722 stars, 94 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped yesterday. lynis leads on adoption by 2,201% (16,611 vs 722 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; rudder is written in Scala under GPL-3.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, rudder 13%. rudder was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (auditing, compliance, devops, hardening), 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 | rudder | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 722 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Shell | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 94 |
| 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 rudder if
- You want the rudder feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and rudder 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 rudder
Infrastructure automation for security posture Website • Docs • Chat • Videos • Bug tracker X (Twitter) • Bluesky • Mastodon • LinkedIn What is Rudder? Rudder is a system infrastructure automation platform, dedicated to empowering IT operational teams to ensure and improve their security posture and fostering collaboration in Security Operations (SecOps). Features Security posture management: Automate critical IT operations to fortify infrastructure security: Automated systems inventory Patch management Vulnerability management System hardening and security standards compliance Configuration management…
read the full rudder overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or rudder more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and rudder has 722. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and rudder free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and rudder under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and rudder?
lynis is written in Shell and rudder in Scala. 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 rudder?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose rudder if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.