head to head · open source
crowdsec vs tenzir
crowdsec has 15,106 GitHub stars, 729 forks, 296 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tenzir has 762 stars, 110 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped today. crowdsec leads on adoption by 1,882% (15,106 vs 762 stars). crowdsec is written in Go under MIT; tenzir is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. crowdsec has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, tenzir 14%. tenzir 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
| crowdsec | tenzir | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 762 |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-10-07 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 729 | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick crowdsec if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tenzir if
- You want the tenzir feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and tenzir fits your workflow better
About crowdsec
CrowdSec is an open source, MIT licensed intrusion detection and prevention system, WAF and bot detection engine that analyses logs and HTTP requests and blocks malicious IPs at the firewall, reverse proxy or CDN, built for Linux, Windows, Docker and Kubernetes operators who want community sourced threat intelligence sitting behind their own infrastructure.
read the full crowdsec overview →
About tenzir
Tenzir is a data pipeline engine for security teams — written in C++ and released under the BSD 3 Clause licence — that lets SOC analysts, detection engineers, and incident responders collect, transform, enrich, and route security telemetry instead of only storing it.
read the full tenzir overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is crowdsec or tenzir more popular?
crowdsec has 15,106 GitHub stars and tenzir has 762. crowdsec has the larger community by that measure.
Are crowdsec and tenzir free?
Both are open source. crowdsec is licensed under MIT and tenzir under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between crowdsec and tenzir?
crowdsec is written in Go and tenzir 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, crowdsec or tenzir?
Choose crowdsec if you want the larger community (15,106 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tenzir if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.