head to head · open source
ProjectDiscovery vs thc-hydra
ProjectDiscovery has 32,593 GitHub stars, 3,970 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. thc-hydra has 12,462 stars, 2,696 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. ProjectDiscovery leads on adoption by 162% (32,593 vs 12,462 stars). ProjectDiscovery is written in Go under MIT; thc-hydra is written in C under AGPL-3.0. ProjectDiscovery has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, thc-hydra 22%. 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| ProjectDiscovery | thc-hydra | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 33K | ★ 12K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 2.7K |
| 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 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 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 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 →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Threat Detection & Response projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Threat Detection & Response field.
Frequently asked questions
Is ProjectDiscovery or thc-hydra more popular?
ProjectDiscovery has 32,593 GitHub stars and thc-hydra has 12,462. ProjectDiscovery has the larger community by that measure.
Are ProjectDiscovery and thc-hydra free?
Both are open source. ProjectDiscovery is licensed under MIT and thc-hydra under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ProjectDiscovery and thc-hydra?
ProjectDiscovery 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, ProjectDiscovery or thc-hydra?
Choose ProjectDiscovery if you want the larger community (32,593 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.