head to head · open source
teleport vs HardeningKitty
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars, 2,158 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped yesterday. HardeningKitty has 1,838 stars, 213 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. teleport leads on adoption by 1,038% (20,924 vs 1,838 stars). teleport is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; HardeningKitty is written in PowerShell under MIT. teleport has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, HardeningKitty 12%. teleport was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (audit), 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
| teleport | HardeningKitty | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | PowerShell |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 213 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick teleport if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick HardeningKitty if
- You want the HardeningKitty feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PowerShell
- You evaluated both and HardeningKitty fits your workflow better
About teleport
Teleport is an open source, identity aware access plane that provides connectivity, authentication, access control, and audit for servers, Kubernetes clusters, databases, Windows desktops, web applications, and cloud APIs, and it is aimed at platform, security, and infrastructure teams that need to protect access to that infrastructure.
read the full teleport overview →
About HardeningKitty
HardeningKitty is a PowerShell security tool from the Windows Hardening Project by Michael Schneider. It lives in the Windows ecosystem and supports audit, hardening, registry, checklist, and defense work. The stable version is signed with the code signing certificate of scip AG, and pull requests are sent to the development repository.
read the full HardeningKitty overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or HardeningKitty more popular?
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars and HardeningKitty has 1,838. teleport has the larger community by that measure.
Are teleport and HardeningKitty free?
Both are open source. teleport is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and HardeningKitty under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between teleport and HardeningKitty?
teleport is written in Go and HardeningKitty in PowerShell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, teleport or HardeningKitty?
Choose teleport if you want the larger community (20,924 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose HardeningKitty if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.