head to head · open source
shannon vs ship-safe
shannon has 50,964 GitHub stars, 5,926 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. ship-safe has 870 stars, 115 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. shannon leads on adoption by 5,758% (50,964 vs 870 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; ship-safe is written in JavaScript under MIT. shannon has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, ship-safe 13%. shannon was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-security, devsecops, owasp), 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 | ship-safe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 51K | ★ 870 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-27 | 2026-10-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.9K | ⑂ 115 |
| 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 ship-safe if
- You want the ship-safe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and ship-safe 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 ship-safe
The independent security agent for AI written software. It finds issues, investigates whether they are real, and shows you the evidence. Website · Docs · Security & Data Flow · Benchmark · Pricing · Blog · Contribute Ship Safe CLI Ship Safe runs locally in your repo and works in two layers. A deterministic engine finds issues across application code, AI agents, MCP configs, prompts, dependencies, CI/CD, secrets, and cloud adjacent configuration. Fast, repeatable, and benchmarked — this is the sensor layer. An investigation layer then decides what the findings are worth. It traces the value that reaches a sink…
read the full ship-safe overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or ship-safe more popular?
shannon has 50,964 GitHub stars and ship-safe has 870. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and ship-safe free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ship-safe under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and ship-safe?
shannon is written in TypeScript and ship-safe in JavaScript. 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 ship-safe?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (50,964 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose ship-safe if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.