head to head · open source
shannon vs pipelock
shannon has 48,105 GitHub stars, 5,515 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. pipelock has 879 stars, 101 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shannon leads on adoption by 5,373% (48,105 vs 879 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; pipelock is written in Go under Apache-2.0. shannon has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, pipelock 11%. pipelock 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 | pipelock | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 879 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 101 |
| 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 pipelock if
- You want the pipelock feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pipelock 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 pipelock
Pipelock is an open source AI agent firewall written in Go and licensed Apache 2.0 that sits between AI agents and the network, inspecting mediated HTTP, WebSocket, MCP, and A2A traffic for secret exfiltration, prompt injection, SSRF, tool poisoning, and risky tool call chains, and emitting mediator signed action receipts so a reviewer can verify what the boundary decided from outside the agent runtime.
read the full pipelock overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or pipelock more popular?
shannon has 48,105 GitHub stars and pipelock has 879. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and pipelock free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and pipelock under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and pipelock?
shannon is written in TypeScript and pipelock 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 pipelock?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (48,105 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pipelock if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.