head to head · open source
pentagi vs thc-hydra
pentagi has 33,346 GitHub stars, 5,206 forks, 71 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. thc-hydra has 12,462 stars, 2,696 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. pentagi leads on adoption by 168% (33,346 vs 12,462 stars). pentagi is written in Go under MIT; thc-hydra is written in C under AGPL-3.0. pentagi has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, thc-hydra 22%. thc-hydra 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 | thc-hydra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-22 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pentagi if
- You weight community size — 33K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick thc-hydra if
- You want the thc-hydra feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and thc-hydra fits your workflow better
About pentagi
PentAGI P enetration testing A rtificial G eneral I ntelligence Join the Community! Connect with security researchers, AI enthusiasts, and fellow ethical hackers. Get support, share insights, and stay updated with the latest PentAGI developments. ⠀ Table of Contents Overview Features Architecture Agent Supervision Quick Start Agent Docker Access Running Several Instances How to Use PentAGI After Login API Access LLM Provider Configuration Ollama OpenAI Anthropic Google AI (Gemini) AWS Bedrock DeepSeek GLM Kimi Qwen MiniMax Advanced Setup Langfuse Integration Monitoring and Observability Knowledge Graph…
read the full pentagi overview →
About thc-hydra
H Y D R A (c) 2001 2023 by van Hauser / THC Many modules were written by David (dot) Maciejak @ gmail (dot) com BFG code by Jan Dlabal Licensed under AGPLv3 (see LICENSE file) Please do not use in military or secret service organizations, or for illegal purposes. (This is the wish of the author and non binding. Many people working in these organizations do not care for laws and ethics anyway. You are not one of the "good" ones if you ignore this.) NOTE: No, this is not meant to be a markdown doc! old school! Hydra in the most current GitHub state can be directly downloaded via Docker: INTRODUCTION Number one of…
read the full thc-hydra overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pentagi or thc-hydra more popular?
pentagi has 33,346 GitHub stars and thc-hydra has 12,462. pentagi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pentagi and thc-hydra free?
Both are open source. pentagi is licensed under MIT and thc-hydra under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pentagi and thc-hydra?
pentagi is written in Go and thc-hydra 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, pentagi or thc-hydra?
Choose pentagi if you want the larger community (33,346 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose thc-hydra if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.