head to head · open source
prowler vs licensee
prowler has 14,904 GitHub stars, 2,410 forks, 371 open issues and last shipped today. licensee has 912 stars, 347 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped yesterday. prowler leads on adoption by 1,534% (14,904 vs 912 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 | ★ 912 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 347 |
| 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 an Apache 2.0, Python based open source cloud security platform that automates security and compliance assessments across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud through thousands of ready to use checks, aimed at cloud security, compliance, and DevSecOps teams that need continuous posture management without a commercial licence.
read the full prowler overview →
About licensee
Licensee is a Ruby gem and command line tool that automatically determines which open source license a project is distributed under, aimed at developers, compliance teams, and maintainers who need to know what they can and cannot do with a codebase.
read the full licensee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is prowler or licensee more popular?
prowler has 14,904 GitHub stars and licensee has 912. 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 (14,904 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose licensee if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.