head to head · open source
prowler vs privado
prowler has 14,830 GitHub stars, 2,390 forks, 371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. privado has 658 stars, 76 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. prowler leads on adoption by 2,154% (14,830 vs 658 stars). prowler is written in Python under Apache-2.0; privado is written in Python under LGPL-3.0. prowler has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, privado 12%. prowler was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (compliance, devsecops, gdpr, hacktoberfest), 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 | privado | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 658 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-11-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 76 |
| 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 privado if
- You want the privado feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and privado 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 privado
What is Privado? Privado is an open source static code analysis tool to discover data flows in the code. It detects more than 110 personal data elements being processed and further maps the data flow from the point of collection to "sinks" such as external third parties, databases, logs, and internal APIs. Supported languages We support Java and Python in GA. Our Enterprise offering covers all programming languages, and we're working on adding support for more languages to OSS. Support for JS/TS is coming soon! Quick Start First, make sure you have Docker installed on your system, then follow these simple steps t…
read the full privado overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is prowler or privado more popular?
prowler has 14,830 GitHub stars and privado has 658. prowler has the larger community by that measure.
Are prowler and privado free?
Both are open source. prowler is licensed under Apache-2.0 and privado under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between prowler and privado?
prowler is written in Python and privado in Python. 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 privado?
Choose prowler if you want the larger community (14,830 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose privado if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.