head to head · open source
ProjectDiscovery vs WhatWeb
ProjectDiscovery has 31,496 GitHub stars, 3,892 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WhatWeb has 6,855 stars, 1,013 forks, 51 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. ProjectDiscovery leads on adoption by 359% (31,496 vs 6,855 stars). ProjectDiscovery is written in Go under MIT; WhatWeb is written in Ruby under GPL-2.0. ProjectDiscovery has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, WhatWeb 15%. 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 | WhatWeb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 31K | ★ 6.9K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-04-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ProjectDiscovery if
- You weight community size — 31K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WhatWeb if
- You want the WhatWeb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and WhatWeb fits your workflow better
About ProjectDiscovery
Nuclei is a high performance, open source vulnerability scanner built by ProjectDiscovery, part of the ProjectDiscovery ecosystem. It operates as a CLI tool using a simple YAML based DSL to define custom vulnerability checks, enabling precise, real world exploitation simulation to eliminate false positives.
read the full ProjectDiscovery overview →
About WhatWeb
WhatWeb is a free, GPL 2.0 licensed web scanner written in Ruby that identifies the technologies powering a website — content management systems, blogging platforms, analytics packages, JavaScript libraries, web servers and embedded devices — and it is built for penetration testers, security analysts and network defenders who need to answer the question, "What is that Website?"
read the full WhatWeb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ProjectDiscovery or WhatWeb more popular?
ProjectDiscovery has 31,496 GitHub stars and WhatWeb has 6,855. ProjectDiscovery has the larger community by that measure.
Are ProjectDiscovery and WhatWeb free?
Both are open source. ProjectDiscovery is licensed under MIT and WhatWeb under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ProjectDiscovery and WhatWeb?
ProjectDiscovery is written in Go and WhatWeb in Ruby. 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 WhatWeb?
Choose ProjectDiscovery if you want the larger community (31,496 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose WhatWeb if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.