head to head · open source
shannon vs garak
shannon has 50,964 GitHub stars, 5,926 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. garak has 9,834 stars, 1,436 forks, 429 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shannon leads on adoption by 418% (50,964 vs 9,834 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; garak is written in Python under Apache-2.0. shannon has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, garak 15%. garak 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
| shannon | garak | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 51K | ★ 9.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-27 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 garak if
- You want the garak feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and garak 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 garak
garak, LLM vulnerability scanner Generative AI Red teaming & Assessment Kit garak checks if an LLM can be made to fail in a way we don't want. garak probes for hallucination, data leakage, prompt injection, misinformation, toxicity generation, jailbreaks, and many other weaknesses. If you know nmap or msf / Metasploit Framework, garak does somewhat similar things to them, but for LLMs. garak focuses on ways of making an LLM or dialog system fail. It combines static, dynamic, and adaptive probes to explore this. garak 's a free tool. We love developing it and are always interested in adding functionality to…
read the full garak overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or garak more popular?
shannon has 50,964 GitHub stars and garak has 9,834. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and garak free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and garak under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and garak?
shannon is written in TypeScript and garak in Python. 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 garak?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (50,964 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose garak if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.