head to head · open source
vuls vs reconftw
vuls has 12,267 GitHub stars, 1,244 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. reconftw has 8,138 stars, 1,235 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vuls leads on adoption by 51% (12,267 vs 8,138 stars). vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0; reconftw is written in Shell under MIT. vuls has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, reconftw 15%. reconftw 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
| vuls | reconftw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 8.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vuls if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick reconftw if
- You want the reconftw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and reconftw fits your workflow better
About vuls
Vuls is an agent less vulnerability scanner written in Go and licensed under GPL 3.0, aimed at system administrators and security teams that must find and track known vulnerabilities across Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and macOS hosts, containers, WordPress installs, programming language libraries and network devices without installing an agent on every machine.
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vuls or reconftw more popular?
vuls has 12,267 GitHub stars and reconftw has 8,138. vuls has the larger community by that measure.
Are vuls and reconftw free?
Both are open source. vuls is licensed under GPL-3.0 and reconftw under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vuls and reconftw?
vuls is written in Go and reconftw in Shell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, vuls or reconftw?
Choose vuls if you want the larger community (12,267 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose reconftw if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.