head to head · open source
reviewdog vs mantis
reviewdog has 9,601 GitHub stars, 495 forks, 131 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mantis has 1,665 stars, 160 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. reviewdog leads on adoption by 477% (9,601 vs 1,665 stars). reviewdog is written in Go under MIT; mantis is written in Python under Apache-2.0. reviewdog has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, mantis 10%. reviewdog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (code-review), 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
| reviewdog | mantis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.6K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 495 | ⑂ 160 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick reviewdog if
- You weight community size — 9.6K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mantis if
- You want the mantis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and mantis fits your workflow better
About reviewdog
reviewdog is an automated code review tool written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the version control and collaboration space of the developer tooling ecosystem, and it integrates with code analysis tools regardless of programming language. Rather than performing analysis itself, reviewdog consumes the output of existing linters and static analysis tools and turns those findings into review comments on code hosting services. The project has been published for roughly ten years, carries more than nine thousand stars and close to five hundred forks, and its topic list covers CI, linting, stat…
read the full reviewdog overview →
About mantis
Mantis is a modular, stack agnostic toolkit of security review skills for AI coding agents, and it includes an ADK reference harness for building secure software. It lives in the developer tools, AI coding agent, and application security ecosystem, with topics such as code review, DevSecOps, multi agent systems, and hardware security. The project helps agents autonomously find, reproduce, and patch vulnerabilities while giving humans a structured way to review results.
read the full mantis overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is reviewdog or mantis more popular?
reviewdog has 9,601 GitHub stars and mantis has 1,665. reviewdog has the larger community by that measure.
Are reviewdog and mantis free?
Both are open source. reviewdog is licensed under MIT and mantis under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between reviewdog and mantis?
reviewdog is written in Go and mantis in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, reviewdog or mantis?
Choose reviewdog if you want the larger community (9,601 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mantis if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.