head to head · open source
gitleaks vs rancher
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars, 2,236 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. rancher has 25,922 stars, 3,222 forks, 3,371 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitleaks leads on adoption by 13% (29,364 vs 25,922 stars). gitleaks is written in Go under MIT; rancher is written in Go under Apache-2.0. gitleaks has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, rancher 12%. rancher 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
| gitleaks | rancher | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 3.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gitleaks if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rancher if
- You want the rancher 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 rancher fits your workflow better
About gitleaks
Gitleaks is an MIT licensed, Go based command line tool that detects hardcoded secrets such as passwords, API keys, and tokens in git repositories, files, and standard input, and it serves developers and security teams that need to keep credentials out of source control.
read the full gitleaks overview →
About rancher
Rancher is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based open source container management platform for organizations that deploy containers in production and need to run Kubernetes everywhere while meeting IT requirements and empowering DevOps teams.
read the full rancher overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gitleaks or rancher more popular?
gitleaks has 29,364 GitHub stars and rancher has 25,922. gitleaks has the larger community by that measure.
Are gitleaks and rancher free?
Both are open source. gitleaks is licensed under MIT and rancher under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gitleaks and rancher?
gitleaks is written in Go and rancher 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, gitleaks or rancher?
Choose gitleaks if you want the larger community (29,364 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rancher if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.