head to head · open source
reconftw vs afrog
reconftw has 8,138 GitHub stars, 1,235 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped yesterday. afrog has 4,420 stars, 483 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. reconftw leads on adoption by 84% (8,138 vs 4,420 stars). reconftw is written in Shell under MIT; afrog is written in HTML under MIT. reconftw has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, afrog 11%. reconftw was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (bug-bounty, penetration-testing, pentest), 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
| reconftw | afrog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.1K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Shell | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 483 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick reconftw if
- You weight community size — 8.1K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick afrog if
- You want the afrog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and afrog fits your workflow better
About reconftw
reconFTW is an automated reconnaissance framework, written in Shell under the MIT licence, that runs a curated chain of security tools against a target domain to enumerate subdomains and hosts, gather OSINT, analyse web surfaces, and check for vulnerabilities; it is built for security researchers, penetration testers, and bug bounty hunters.
read the full reconftw overview →
About afrog
afrog is an MIT licensed vulnerability scanner built for bug bounty, penetration testing and red teaming, aimed at testers who need fast verification of web targets and network services with low false positives.
read the full afrog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is reconftw or afrog more popular?
reconftw has 8,138 GitHub stars and afrog has 4,420. reconftw has the larger community by that measure.
Are reconftw and afrog free?
Both are open source. reconftw is licensed under MIT and afrog under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between reconftw and afrog?
reconftw is written in Shell and afrog in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, reconftw or afrog?
Choose reconftw if you want the larger community (8,138 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose afrog if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.