head to head · open source
ProjectDiscovery vs cwe_checker
ProjectDiscovery has 32,650 GitHub stars, 3,977 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cwe_checker has 1,363 stars, 146 forks, 30 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. ProjectDiscovery leads on adoption by 2,295% (32,650 vs 1,363 stars). ProjectDiscovery is written in Go under MIT; cwe_checker is written in Rust under LGPL-3.0. ProjectDiscovery has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, cwe_checker 11%. ProjectDiscovery was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (security, security-scanner, vulnerability-scanner), 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
| ProjectDiscovery | cwe_checker | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 146 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ProjectDiscovery 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 cwe_checker if
- You want the cwe_checker feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and cwe_checker fits your workflow better
About ProjectDiscovery
English • 中文 • Korean • Indonesia • Spanish • 日本語 • Portuguese • Türkçe Nuclei is a modern, high performance vulnerability scanner that leverages simple YAML based templates. It empowers you to design custom vulnerability detection scenarios that mimic real world conditions, leading to zero false positives. Simple YAML format for creating and customizing vulnerability templates. Contributed by thousands of security professionals to tackle trending vulnerabilities. Reduce false positives by simulating real world steps to verify a vulnerability. Ultra fast parallel scan processing and request clustering. Integrate…
read the full ProjectDiscovery overview →
About cwe_checker
cwe checker What is cwe checker? cwe checker is a suite of checks to detect common bug classes such as Null pointer dereferences and buffer overflows. These bug classes are formally known as Common Weakness Enumerations (CWEs). The checks are based on a variety of anaylsis techniques ranging from simple heuristics to abstract interpretation based data flow analysis. Its main goal is to aid analysts to quickly find potentially vulnerable code paths. Its main focus are ELF binaries that are commonly found on Linux and Unix operating systems. The cwe checker uses Ghidra to disassemble binaries into one common…
read the full cwe_checker overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ProjectDiscovery or cwe_checker more popular?
ProjectDiscovery has 32,650 GitHub stars and cwe_checker has 1,363. ProjectDiscovery has the larger community by that measure.
Are ProjectDiscovery and cwe_checker free?
Both are open source. ProjectDiscovery is licensed under MIT and cwe_checker under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ProjectDiscovery and cwe_checker?
ProjectDiscovery is written in Go and cwe_checker in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ProjectDiscovery or cwe_checker?
Choose ProjectDiscovery if you want the larger community (32,650 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cwe_checker if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.