head to head · open source
pentagi vs pacu
pentagi has 25,148 GitHub stars, 3,236 forks, 71 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pacu has 5,345 stars, 800 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. pentagi leads on adoption by 370% (25,148 vs 5,345 stars). pentagi is written in Go under MIT; pacu is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause. pentagi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, pacu 15%. pentagi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (penetration-testing), 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
| pentagi | pacu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-05-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 800 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pentagi if
- You weight community size — 25K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick pacu if
- You want the pacu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and pacu fits your workflow better
About pentagi
PentAGI is an MIT licensed, self hosted multi agent system written in Go that runs fully autonomous AI agents to perform complex penetration testing tasks inside an isolated Docker sandbox, built for information security professionals, researchers, and enthusiasts.
read the full pentagi overview →
About pacu
Pacu is an open source AWS exploitation framework from Rhino Security Labs, built for penetration testers and offensive security teams who need to test the security of Amazon Web Services environments.
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Frequently asked questions
Is pentagi or pacu more popular?
pentagi has 25,148 GitHub stars and pacu has 5,345. pentagi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pentagi and pacu free?
Both are open source. pentagi is licensed under MIT and pacu under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pentagi and pacu?
pentagi is written in Go and pacu 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, pentagi or pacu?
Choose pentagi if you want the larger community (25,148 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pacu if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.