head to head · open source
teleport vs lynis
teleport has 21,061 GitHub stars, 2,181 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. lynis has 16,611 stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. teleport leads on adoption by 27% (21,061 vs 16,611 stars). teleport is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. teleport has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, lynis 10%. teleport 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
| teleport | lynis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 17K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick teleport if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lynis if
- You want the lynis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and lynis fits your workflow better
About teleport
Teleport provides connectivity, authentication, access controls and audit for infrastructure. You might use Teleport to: Set up single sign on (SSO) for all of your cloud and on prem infrastructure. Protect access to servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows desktops, web applications, and cloud APIs without long lived keys or passwords. Establish secure tunnels to reach resources behind NATs and firewalls without VPNs or bastion hosts. Record and audit activity across SSH, Kubernetes, database, RDP, and web sessions. Apply consistent Role Based and Attribute Based Access Control (RBAC/ABAC) across users…
read the full teleport overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or lynis more popular?
teleport has 21,061 GitHub stars and lynis has 16,611. teleport has the larger community by that measure.
Are teleport and lynis free?
Both are open source. teleport is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and lynis under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between teleport and lynis?
teleport is written in Go and lynis in Shell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, teleport or lynis?
Choose teleport if you want the larger community (21,061 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose lynis if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.