head to head · open source
lynis vs ThreatMapper
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars, 1,645 forks, 224 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. ThreatMapper has 5,327 stars, 631 forks, 144 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. lynis leads on adoption by 212% (16,611 vs 5,327 stars). lynis is written in Shell under GPL-3.0; ThreatMapper is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. lynis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, ThreatMapper 12%. lynis was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (compliance, devops), 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 | ThreatMapper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Shell | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-06-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 631 |
| 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 ThreatMapper if
- You want the ThreatMapper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ThreatMapper 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 ThreatMapper
ThreatMapper Runtime Threat Management and Attack Path Enumeration for Cloud Native [!NOTE] This project is maintained by Deepfence ThreatMapper hunts for threats in your production platforms, and ranks these threats based on their risk of exploit. It uncovers vulnerable software components, exposed secrets and deviations from good security practice. ThreatMapper uses a combination of agent based inspection and agent less monitoring to provide the widest possible coverage to detect threats. With ThreatMapper's ThreatGraph visualization, you can then identify the issues that present the greatest risk to the…
read the full ThreatMapper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is lynis or ThreatMapper more popular?
lynis has 16,611 GitHub stars and ThreatMapper has 5,327. lynis has the larger community by that measure.
Are lynis and ThreatMapper free?
Both are open source. lynis is licensed under GPL-3.0 and ThreatMapper under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between lynis and ThreatMapper?
lynis is written in Shell and ThreatMapper in TypeScript. 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 ThreatMapper?
Choose lynis if you want the larger community (16,611 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ThreatMapper if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.