head to head · open source
prowler vs licensee
prowler has 15,244 GitHub stars, 2,500 forks, 371 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. licensee has 923 stars, 350 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. prowler leads on adoption by 1,552% (15,244 vs 923 stars). prowler is written in Python under Apache-2.0; licensee is written in Ruby under MIT. prowler has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, licensee 38%. prowler was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (compliance), 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
| prowler | licensee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 923 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-13 | 2026-11-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 350 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick prowler if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick licensee if
- You want the licensee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and licensee fits your workflow better
About prowler
Prowler is the Open Cloud Security Platform trusted by thousands to automate security and compliance in any cloud environment. With thousands of ready to use checks and compliance frameworks, Prowler delivers real time, customizable monitoring and seamless integrations, making cloud security simple, scalable, and cost effective for organizations of any size. The Agentic Cloud Defender Try Prowler Cloud Join our Prowler community! Description Prowler is the world’s most widely used Open Source Cloud Security Platform that automates security and compliance across any cloud environment . With thousands of ready to…
read the full prowler overview →
About licensee
Licensee A Ruby Gem to detect under what license a project is distributed. The problem You've got an open source project. How do you know what you can and can't do with the software? You've got a bunch of open source projects, how do you know what their licenses are? You've got a project with a license file, but which license is it? Has it been modified? The solution Licensee automates the process of reading LICENSE files and compares their contents to known licenses using several strategies (which we call "Matchers"). It attempts to determine a project's license in the following order: If the license file has…
read the full licensee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is prowler or licensee more popular?
prowler has 15,244 GitHub stars and licensee has 923. prowler has the larger community by that measure.
Are prowler and licensee free?
Both are open source. prowler is licensed under Apache-2.0 and licensee under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between prowler and licensee?
prowler is written in Python and licensee 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, prowler or licensee?
Choose prowler if you want the larger community (15,244 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose licensee if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.