head to head · open source
thc-hydra vs rengine
thc-hydra has 12,470 GitHub stars, 2,698 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. rengine has 8,917 stars, 1,345 forks, 164 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. thc-hydra leads on adoption by 40% (12,470 vs 8,917 stars). thc-hydra is written in C under AGPL-3.0; rengine is written in HTML under GPL-3.0. thc-hydra has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, rengine 15%. rengine was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (penetration-testing), 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
| thc-hydra | rengine | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 8.9K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-10-30 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick thc-hydra if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rengine if
- You want the rengine feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and rengine fits your workflow better
About thc-hydra
H Y D R A (c) 2001 2023 by van Hauser / THC Many modules were written by David (dot) Maciejak @ gmail (dot) com BFG code by Jan Dlabal Licensed under AGPLv3 (see LICENSE file) Please do not use in military or secret service organizations, or for illegal purposes. (This is the wish of the author and non binding. Many people working in these organizations do not care for laws and ethics anyway. You are not one of the "good" ones if you ignore this.) NOTE: No, this is not meant to be a markdown doc! old school! Hydra in the most current GitHub state can be directly downloaded via Docker: INTRODUCTION Number one of…
read the full thc-hydra overview →
About rengine
reNgine: The Ultimate Web Reconnaissance & Vulnerability Scanner 🚀 reNgine 2.2.0 is released! reNgine 2.2.0 comes with bounty hub where you can sync and import your hackerone programs, in app notifications, chaos as subdomain enumeration tool, ability to upload multiple nuclei and gf patterns, support for regex in out of scope subdomain config, additional pdf report template and many more. Check out What's new in reNgine 2.2.0! What is reNgine? reNgine is your ultimate web application reconnaissance suite, designed to supercharge the recon process for security pros, pentesters, and bug bounty hunters. It is go…
read the full rengine overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is thc-hydra or rengine more popular?
thc-hydra has 12,470 GitHub stars and rengine has 8,917. thc-hydra has the larger community by that measure.
Are thc-hydra and rengine free?
Both are open source. thc-hydra is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and rengine under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between thc-hydra and rengine?
thc-hydra is written in C and rengine 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, thc-hydra or rengine?
Choose thc-hydra if you want the larger community (12,470 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose rengine if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.