head to head · open source
lynis vs threagile
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars, 1,635 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. threagile has 780 stars, 167 forks, 51 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. lynis leads on adoption by 1,997% (16,355 vs 780 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; threagile is written in Go under MIT. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, threagile 21%. lynis 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| lynis | threagile | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 780 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-04-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 167 |
| 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 threagile if
- You want the threagile feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and threagile 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 threagile
Threagile is an open source Agile Threat Modeling Toolkit written in Go under the MIT license. It lives in the DevSecOps, information security, risk management, and agile architecture ecosystem, and it lets teams describe a software architecture and its assets as a YAML model inside an IDE.
read the full threagile overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Compliance & Risk Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Compliance & Risk Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or threagile more popular?
lynis has 16,355 GitHub stars and threagile has 780. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and threagile free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and threagile under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and threagile?
lynis is written in Shell and threagile 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 threagile?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,355 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose threagile if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.