head to head · open source
tfsec vs Harden-Windows-Security
tfsec has 7,061 GitHub stars, 560 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. Harden-Windows-Security has 4,831 stars, 348 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. tfsec leads on adoption by 46% (7,061 vs 4,831 stars). tfsec is written in Go under MIT; Harden-Windows-Security is written in C# under MIT. tfsec has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Harden-Windows-Security 7%. Harden-Windows-Security was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (compliance), 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
| tfsec | Harden-Windows-Security | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.1K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-03-25 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 560 | ⑂ 348 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick tfsec if
- You weight community size — 7.1K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Harden-Windows-Security if
- You want the Harden-Windows-Security feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and Harden-Windows-Security fits your workflow better
About tfsec
📣 tfsec to Trivy Migration As part of our goal to provide a comprehensive open source security solution for all, we have been consolidating all of our scanning related efforts in one place, and that is Trivy. Over the past year, tfsec has laid the foundations to Trivy's IaC & misconfigurations scanning capabilities, including Terraform scanning, which has been natively supported in Trivy for a long time now. Going forward we want to encourage the tfsec community to transition over to Trivy. Moving to Trivy gives you the same excellent Terraform scanning engine, with some extra benefits: 1. Access to more…
read the full tfsec overview →
About Harden-Windows-Security
Harden Windows Security A New Threat to Malware Harden Windows Safely, Securely, Only With Official Microsoft Methods How To Use Related Trust Support Security Recommendations Resources License Wiki Basic FAQs Roadmap Donation [!IMPORTANT]\ Here are Quick Access Points to Important Sections of this Repository Harden System Security App AppControl Manager App Application Control for Business Resources [!NOTE]\ This repository only uses the features that have already been implemented by Microsoft in Windows OS to fine tune it towards the highest security and locked down state, without relying on any 3rd party…
read the full Harden-Windows-Security overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is tfsec or Harden-Windows-Security more popular?
tfsec has 7,061 GitHub stars and Harden-Windows-Security has 4,831. tfsec has the larger community by that measure.
Are tfsec and Harden-Windows-Security free?
Both are open source. tfsec is licensed under MIT and Harden-Windows-Security under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between tfsec and Harden-Windows-Security?
tfsec is written in Go and Harden-Windows-Security 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, tfsec or Harden-Windows-Security?
Choose tfsec if you want the larger community (7,061 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Harden-Windows-Security if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.