head to head · open source
Pangolin vs suricata
Pangolin has 23,299 GitHub stars, 807 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. suricata has 6,812 stars, 1,783 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pangolin leads on adoption by 242% (23,299 vs 6,812 stars). Pangolin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; suricata is written in C under GPL-2.0. Pangolin has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, suricata 26%. Pangolin 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
| Pangolin | suricata | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 807 | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pangolin if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick suricata if
- You want the suricata feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and suricata fits your workflow better
About Pangolin
Website Documentation Contact Us Get started with Pangolin Cloud at app.pangolin.net Pangolin is an open source SASE platform, built on WireGuard®, with a simple mission: connect and protect your users, wherever they are. It brings networking and security together as one system including a zero trust VPN, zero trust reverse proxy, privileged access management, and an identity aware AI gateway, all sharing one identity and policy model. It's the same idea behind platforms like Cloudflare One, Zscaler, and Prisma but open, self hostable, and built to stay light and easy to deploy. Networking and security that's…
read the full Pangolin overview →
About suricata
Suricata Introduction Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine developed by the OISF and the Suricata community. Resources Home Page Bug Tracker User Guide Dev Guide Installation Guide User Support Forum Contributing We're happily taking patches and other contributions. Please see our Contribution Process for how to get started. Suricata is a complex piece of software dealing with mostly untrusted input. Mishandling this input will have serious consequences: in IPS mode a crash may knock a network offline in passive mode a compromise of the IDS may lead to loss of critical and confidential data missed…
read the full suricata overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pangolin or suricata more popular?
Pangolin has 23,299 GitHub stars and suricata has 6,812. Pangolin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pangolin and suricata free?
Both are open source. Pangolin has no licence declared in this registry, and suricata is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Pangolin and suricata?
Pangolin is written in TypeScript and suricata in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Pangolin or suricata?
Choose Pangolin if you want the larger community (23,299 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose suricata if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.