head to head · open source
shannon vs beelzebub
shannon has 48,105 GitHub stars, 5,515 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. beelzebub has 2,177 stars, 209 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. shannon leads on adoption by 2,110% (48,105 vs 2,177 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; beelzebub is written in Go under GPL-3.0. shannon has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, beelzebub 10%. beelzebub was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cybersecurity), 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 | beelzebub | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 209 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick shannon if
- You weight community size — 48K 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 beelzebub if
- You want the beelzebub feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and beelzebub fits your workflow better
About shannon
Shannon is an autonomous AI pentester for web applications and APIs that reads an application's source code, identifies attack paths, and executes real exploits so that only vulnerabilities with a working proof of concept are reported, built for AppSec, DevSecOps, and security engineering teams that ship code continuously.
read the full shannon overview →
About beelzebub
Beelzebub is an open source deception runtime framework written in Go and released under GPL 3.0. It operates in the cybersecurity and AI security ecosystem, where teams need controlled systems that attract and record activity aimed at decoy services. The project is a configurable runtime for honeypots, decoys, and agent facing bait tools, with documentation at docs.beelzebub.ai.
read the full beelzebub overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or beelzebub more popular?
shannon has 48,105 GitHub stars and beelzebub has 2,177. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and beelzebub free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and beelzebub under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and beelzebub?
shannon is written in TypeScript and beelzebub in Go. 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 beelzebub?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (48,105 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose beelzebub if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.