head to head · open source
shannon vs akto
shannon has 50,964 GitHub stars, 5,926 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. akto has 1,537 stars, 294 forks, 347 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shannon leads on adoption by 3,216% (50,964 vs 1,537 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; akto is written in Java under MIT. shannon has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, akto 19%. akto was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-security), 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
| shannon | akto | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 51K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-27 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 294 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick shannon if
- You weight community size — 51K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick akto if
- You want the akto feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and akto fits your workflow better
About shannon
[!NOTE] Shannon 3.0 is live: deeper security code analysis, more thoroughly vetted findings, a rebuilt CLI, native CI/CD, professional PDF reports, and SARIF. Shannon is an autonomous, AI pentester for web applications and APIs. It analyzes your source code, identifies attack paths, and executes real exploits to prove vulnerabilities before they reach production. No exploit, no report. This repository is Shannon Open Source: the full agent, run locally from your command line. Launch Shannon The interactive launcher will guide you through setup and your first pentest. [!TIP] AI agents and LLMs: start with…
read the full shannon overview →
About akto
Akto.io API Security Contributors What is Akto? How it works • Getting Started • API Inventory • API testing • Add Test • Join Discord community • Akto is an instant, open source API security platform that takes only 60 secs to get started. Akto is used by security teams to maintain a continuous inventory of APIs, test APIs for vulnerabilities and find runtime issues. Akto offers coverage for all OWASP top 10 and HackerOne Top 10 categories including BOLA, authentication, SSRF, XSS, security configurations, etc. Akto's powerful testing engine runs variety of business logic tests by reading traffic data to…
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or akto more popular?
shannon has 50,964 GitHub stars and akto has 1,537. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and akto free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and akto under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and akto?
shannon is written in TypeScript and akto in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, shannon or akto?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (50,964 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose akto if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.