head to head · open source
opa vs tfsec
opa has 12,425 GitHub stars, 1,706 forks, 310 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tfsec has 7,061 stars, 560 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. opa leads on adoption by 76% (12,425 vs 7,061 stars). opa is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tfsec is written in Go under MIT. opa has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, tfsec 8%. opa 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
| opa | tfsec | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 560 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick opa if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 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 opa
Open Policy Agent Open Policy Agent (OPA) is an open source, general purpose policy engine that enables unified, context aware policy enforcement across the entire stack. OPA is proud to be a graduated project in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) landscape. For details read the CNCF announcement. Get started with OPA Write your first Rego policy with the Rego Playground or use it to share your work with others for feedback and support. Have a look at the Access Control examples if you're not sure where to start. Install the VS Code extension to get started locally with live diagnostics, debugging and…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is opa or tfsec more popular?
opa has 12,425 GitHub stars and tfsec has 7,061. opa has the larger community by that measure.
Are opa and tfsec free?
Both are open source. opa is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tfsec under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between opa and tfsec?
opa 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, opa or tfsec?
Choose opa if you want the larger community (12,425 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tfsec if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.