head to head · open source
rea vs shellcheck
rea has 431,575 GitHub stars, 107,264 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. shellcheck has 40,282 stars, 1,973 forks, 1,137 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. rea leads on adoption by 971% (431,575 vs 40,282 stars). rea is written in TypeScript under MIT; shellcheck is written in Haskell under GPL-3.0. rea has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, shellcheck 5%. rea 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
| rea | shellcheck | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 432K | ★ 40K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Haskell |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 107K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rea if
- You weight community size — 432K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick shellcheck if
- You want the shellcheck feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Haskell
- You evaluated both and shellcheck fits your workflow better
About rea
English · 简体中文 · 繁體中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Türkçe · Русский · Tiếng Việt · ไทย · Deutsch · Español · Français · Українська · Polski · Português (Brasil) · العربية · فارسی REA: Reverse Engineer Anything One MCP for reverse engineering across binaries, applications, and runtime behavior. See a feature you like. Understand how it works, down to the binary level. Website · Guides · Showcases Quick start · How REA works · What you can analyze · Showcases · FAQ · Documentation npx rea agents setup Join the Reverse Engineering Community Discord · Q&A · Show and Tell See a feature in an app that you want in your own product?…
About shellcheck
ShellCheck A shell script static analysis tool ShellCheck is a GPLv3 tool that gives warnings and suggestions for bash/sh shell scripts: The goals of ShellCheck are To point out and clarify typical beginner's syntax issues that cause a shell to give cryptic error messages. To point out and clarify typical intermediate level semantic problems that cause a shell to behave strangely and counter intuitively. To point out subtle caveats, corner cases and pitfalls that may cause an advanced user's otherwise working script to fail under future circumstances. See the gallery of bad code for examples of what ShellCheck…
read the full shellcheck overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rea or shellcheck more popular?
rea has 431,575 GitHub stars and shellcheck has 40,282. rea has the larger community by that measure.
Are rea and shellcheck free?
Both are open source. rea is licensed under MIT and shellcheck under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rea and shellcheck?
rea is written in TypeScript and shellcheck in Haskell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, rea or shellcheck?
Choose rea if you want the larger community (431,575 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose shellcheck if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.