head to head · open source
tfsec vs rundeck
tfsec has 7,038 GitHub stars, 558 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. rundeck has 6,304 stars, 987 forks, 81 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. tfsec leads on adoption by 12% (7,038 vs 6,304 stars). tfsec is written in Go under MIT; rundeck is written in Groovy under Apache-2.0. tfsec has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, rundeck 16%. rundeck was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, hacktoberfest), 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
| tfsec | rundeck | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.0K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Groovy |
| Last push | 2026-03-25 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 558 | ⑂ 987 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick tfsec if
- You weight community size — 7.0K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rundeck if
- You want the rundeck feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Groovy
- You evaluated both and rundeck fits your workflow better
About tfsec
tfsec is a static analysis security scanner for Terraform code, written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the infrastructure as code and DevSecOps ecosystem, alongside tools such as linters and CI scanners. The project is now part of Trivy, Aqua Security's broader open source security scanner, and its Terraform scanning engine forms the foundation of Trivy's IaC and misconfiguration scanning capabilities. The repository remains available, but engineering attention is directed at Trivy going forward.
read the full tfsec overview →
About rundeck
Rundeck is an open source runbook automation service maintained by PagerDuty, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and published from the rundeck.org homepage. It provides a web console, command line tools, and a WebAPI, and its stated purpose is to enable self service operations by giving specific users access to existing tools, services, and scripts. The repository is 16 years old and lives in the DevOps and operations tooling ecosystem, alongside topics such as ansible, automation, deployment, audit, ops, and devops tools.
read the full rundeck overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is tfsec or rundeck more popular?
tfsec has 7,038 GitHub stars and rundeck has 6,304. tfsec has the larger community by that measure.
Are tfsec and rundeck free?
Both are open source. tfsec is licensed under MIT and rundeck under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between tfsec and rundeck?
tfsec is written in Go and rundeck in Groovy. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, tfsec or rundeck?
Choose tfsec if you want the larger community (7,038 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rundeck if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.