head to head · open source
trivy vs Pulumi
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pulumi has 25,694 stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 48% (37,961 vs 25,694 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, Pulumi 6%. Pulumi was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (containers, go, golang, iac), 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
| trivy | Pulumi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 26K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 1.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick trivy if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Pulumi if
- You want the Pulumi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Pulumi fits your workflow better
About trivy
Trivy is an open source security scanner written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It is an Aqua Security open source project, hosted at trivy.dev, and it lives in the cloud native and DevSecOps ecosystem alongside container runtimes, Kubernetes clusters, and infrastructure as code tooling. The design separates two ideas: scanners, which describe the classes of security issue Trivy looks for, and targets, which describe where it looks. The README presents the project as a comprehensive and versatile scanner, and the topic list — containers, devsecops, docker, iac, infrastructure as code, kubernetes…
read the full trivy overview →
About Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that lets teams define and deploy cloud infrastructure using general purpose programming languages instead of YAML, aimed at developers, platform engineers, and agents working across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
read the full Pulumi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or Pulumi more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and Pulumi has 25,694. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and Pulumi free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pulumi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and Pulumi?
trivy is written in Go and Pulumi in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, trivy or Pulumi?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,961 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Pulumi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.