head to head · open source
tenzir vs rustinel
tenzir has 762 GitHub stars, 110 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped today. rustinel has 501 stars, 62 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tenzir leads on adoption by 52% (762 vs 501 stars). tenzir is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause; rustinel is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. tenzir has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, rustinel 12%. tenzir was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (incident-response), 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
| tenzir | rustinel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 762 | ★ 501 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 110 | ⑂ 62 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick tenzir if
- You weight community size — 762 stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rustinel if
- You want the rustinel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rustinel fits your workflow better
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 →
About rustinel
Rustinel is an open source endpoint detection agent for Windows, Linux, and macOS that runs Sigma, YARA, and IOC rules against native telemetry locally, with no cloud account required.
read the full rustinel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is tenzir or rustinel more popular?
tenzir has 762 GitHub stars and rustinel has 501. tenzir has the larger community by that measure.
Are tenzir and rustinel free?
Both are open source. tenzir is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and rustinel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between tenzir and rustinel?
tenzir is written in C++ and rustinel in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, tenzir or rustinel?
Choose tenzir if you want the larger community (762 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose rustinel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.