head to head · open source
Pangolin vs suricata
Pangolin has 22,815 GitHub stars, 789 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. suricata has 6,646 stars, 1,769 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pangolin leads on adoption by 243% (22,815 vs 6,646 stars). Pangolin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; suricata is written in C under GPL-2.0. Pangolin has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, suricata 27%. Pangolin 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
| Pangolin | suricata | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 789 | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pangolin if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick suricata if
- You want the suricata feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and suricata fits your workflow better
About Pangolin
Pangolin is an open source SASE platform written in TypeScript and built on WireGuard. It provides secure access and connectivity to applications, infrastructure, and AI workloads by combining a zero trust VPN, a zero trust reverse proxy, privileged access management, and an identity aware AI gateway under one identity and policy model. It belongs to the network security ecosystem, specifically self hosted remote access and SASE tooling.
read the full Pangolin overview →
About suricata
Suricata is a network Intrusion Detection System (IDS), Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) and Network Security Monitoring (NSM) engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community, released under GPL 2.0 and written in C, for security teams that need to detect, block and record activity on the networks they operate.
read the full suricata overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pangolin or suricata more popular?
Pangolin has 22,815 GitHub stars and suricata has 6,646. Pangolin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pangolin and suricata free?
Both are open source. Pangolin has no licence declared in this registry, and suricata is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Pangolin and suricata?
Pangolin is written in TypeScript and suricata in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Pangolin or suricata?
Choose Pangolin if you want the larger community (22,815 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose suricata if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.