head to head · open source
teleport vs kyverno
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars, 2,158 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kyverno has 8,159 stars, 1,596 forks, 703 open issues and last shipped yesterday. teleport leads on adoption by 156% (20,924 vs 8,159 stars). teleport is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; kyverno is written in Go under Apache-2.0. teleport has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, kyverno 20%. teleport was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kubernetes), 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 | kyverno | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 kyverno if
- You want the kyverno 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 kyverno 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 kyverno
Kyverno is a Kubernetes native policy engine that lets platform engineering teams define security, compliance, automation, and governance rules as policy as code, using the Kubernetes tools they already run rather than a separate policy language.
read the full kyverno overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or kyverno more popular?
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars and kyverno has 8,159. teleport has the larger community by that measure.
Are teleport and kyverno free?
Both are open source. teleport is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kyverno under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between teleport and kyverno?
teleport is written in Go and kyverno 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, teleport or kyverno?
Choose teleport if you want the larger community (20,924 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kyverno if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.