head to head · open source
ProjectDiscovery vs emba
ProjectDiscovery has 32,576 GitHub stars, 3,966 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped yesterday. emba has 3,749 stars, 344 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ProjectDiscovery leads on adoption by 769% (32,576 vs 3,749 stars). ProjectDiscovery is written in Go under MIT; emba is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. ProjectDiscovery has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, emba 9%. ProjectDiscovery 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
| ProjectDiscovery | emba | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 344 |
| 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 emba if
- You want the emba feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and emba 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 emba
EMBA The security analyzer for firmware of embedded devices EMBA is designed as the central firmware analysis and SBOM tool for penetration testers, product security teams, developers and responsible product managers. It supports the complete security analysis process starting with firmware extraction , doing static analysis and dynamic analysis via emulation, building the SBOM and finally generating a web based vulnerability report. EMBA automatically discovers possible weak spots and vulnerabilities in firmware. Examples are insecure binaries, old and outdated software components, potentially vulnerable…
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Frequently asked questions
Is ProjectDiscovery or emba more popular?
ProjectDiscovery has 32,576 GitHub stars and emba has 3,749. ProjectDiscovery has the larger community by that measure.
Are ProjectDiscovery and emba free?
Both are open source. ProjectDiscovery is licensed under MIT and emba under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ProjectDiscovery and emba?
ProjectDiscovery is written in Go and emba in Shell. 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 emba?
Choose ProjectDiscovery if you want the larger community (32,576 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose emba if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.