head to head · open source
teleport vs tfsec
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars, 2,158 forks, 3,262 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tfsec has 7,038 stars, 558 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. teleport leads on adoption by 197% (20,924 vs 7,038 stars). teleport is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; tfsec is written in Go under MIT. teleport has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, tfsec 8%. teleport was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (go), 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 | tfsec | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 558 |
| 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 tfsec if
- You want the tfsec feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tfsec 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 tfsec
tfsec is a static analysis security scanner for Terraform code, written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the infrastructure as code and DevSecOps ecosystem, alongside tools such as linters and CI scanners. The project is now part of Trivy, Aqua Security's broader open source security scanner, and its Terraform scanning engine forms the foundation of Trivy's IaC and misconfiguration scanning capabilities. The repository remains available, but engineering attention is directed at Trivy going forward.
read the full tfsec overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is teleport or tfsec more popular?
teleport has 20,924 GitHub stars and tfsec has 7,038. teleport has the larger community by that measure.
Are teleport and tfsec free?
Both are open source. teleport is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and tfsec under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between teleport and tfsec?
teleport is written in Go and tfsec 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 tfsec?
Choose teleport if you want the larger community (20,924 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose tfsec if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.