head to head · open source
vuls vs tenzir
vuls has 12,281 GitHub stars, 1,250 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. tenzir has 762 stars, 110 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped today. vuls leads on adoption by 1,512% (12,281 vs 762 stars). vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0; tenzir is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. vuls has attracted 10% 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. The two share 1 topic tag (security), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| vuls | tenzir | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 762 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vuls if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 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 vuls
Vuls is an agent less vulnerability scanner written in Go and licensed under GPL 3.0, aimed at system administrators and security teams that must find and track known vulnerabilities across Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and macOS hosts, containers, WordPress installs, programming language libraries and network devices without installing an agent on every machine.
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 →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Threat Detection & Response projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Threat Detection & Response field.
Frequently asked questions
Is vuls or tenzir more popular?
vuls has 12,281 GitHub stars and tenzir has 762. vuls has the larger community by that measure.
Are vuls and tenzir free?
Both are open source. vuls is licensed under GPL-3.0 and tenzir under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vuls and tenzir?
vuls 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, vuls or tenzir?
Choose vuls if you want the larger community (12,281 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose tenzir if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.