head to head · open source
shannon vs vArmor
shannon has 48,118 GitHub stars, 5,517 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. vArmor has 501 stars, 68 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. shannon leads on adoption by 9,504% (48,118 vs 501 stars). shannon is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; vArmor is written in Go under Apache-2.0. shannon has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, vArmor 14%. vArmor 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 | vArmor | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 501 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-08 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 68 |
| 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 vArmor if
- You want the vArmor 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 vArmor 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 vArmor
English 简体中文 日本語 vArmor is a cloud native container hardening system. It leverages Linux's AppArmor LSM, BPF LSM, Seccomp, and Network Proxy (Envoy based sidecar) technologies to implement enforcers. It can be used to strengthen container isolation, reduce the kernel attack surface, enforce network egress access control at L4/L7 levels — including TLS MITM for decrypted HTTPS inspection, HTTP header injection, and anti Domain Fronting protection — and increase the difficulty and cost of container escape or lateral movement attacks. You can leverage vArmor in the following scenarios to provide sandbox protection f…
read the full vArmor overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is shannon or vArmor more popular?
shannon has 48,118 GitHub stars and vArmor has 501. shannon has the larger community by that measure.
Are shannon and vArmor free?
Both are open source. shannon is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and vArmor under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between shannon and vArmor?
shannon is written in TypeScript and vArmor 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 vArmor?
Choose shannon if you want the larger community (48,118 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose vArmor if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.