head to head · open source
suricata vs WireGuard
suricata has 6,812 GitHub stars, 1,783 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. WireGuard has 735 stars, 325 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. suricata leads on adoption by 827% (6,812 vs 735 stars). suricata is written in C under GPL-2.0; WireGuard is written in C under GPL-2.0. suricata has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, WireGuard 44%. suricata 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
| suricata | WireGuard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.8K | ★ 735 |
| License | GPL-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 325 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick suricata if
- You weight community size — 6.8K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WireGuard if
- You want the WireGuard 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 WireGuard fits your workflow better
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 →
About WireGuard
wireguard tools — tools for configuring WireGuard This supplies the main userspace tooling for using and configuring WireGuard tunnels, including the wg(8) and wg quick(8) utilities. This project supports Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, and Android. More information may be found at WireGuard.com. Building $ cd src $ make There are no dependencies other than a good C compiler and a sane libc. Installing make install This command takes into account several environment variables: PREFIX default: /usr DESTDIR default: BINDIR default: $(PREFIX)/bin LIBDIR default: $(PREFIX)/lib MANDIR default…
read the full WireGuard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is suricata or WireGuard more popular?
suricata has 6,812 GitHub stars and WireGuard has 735. suricata has the larger community by that measure.
Are suricata and WireGuard free?
Both are open source. suricata is licensed under GPL-2.0 and WireGuard under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between suricata and WireGuard?
suricata is written in C and WireGuard 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, suricata or WireGuard?
Choose suricata if you want the larger community (6,812 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose WireGuard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.