head to head · open source
thc-hydra vs afrog
thc-hydra has 12,470 GitHub stars, 2,698 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. afrog has 4,453 stars, 493 forks, 111 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. thc-hydra leads on adoption by 180% (12,470 vs 4,453 stars). thc-hydra is written in C under AGPL-3.0; afrog is written in Go under MIT. thc-hydra has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, afrog 11%. afrog was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (penetration-testing), 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
| thc-hydra | afrog | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 4.5K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 493 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick thc-hydra if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick afrog if
- You want the afrog feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and afrog fits your workflow better
About thc-hydra
H Y D R A (c) 2001 2023 by van Hauser / THC Many modules were written by David (dot) Maciejak @ gmail (dot) com BFG code by Jan Dlabal Licensed under AGPLv3 (see LICENSE file) Please do not use in military or secret service organizations, or for illegal purposes. (This is the wish of the author and non binding. Many people working in these organizations do not care for laws and ethics anyway. You are not one of the "good" ones if you ignore this.) NOTE: No, this is not meant to be a markdown doc! old school! Hydra in the most current GitHub state can be directly downloaded via Docker: INTRODUCTION Number one of…
read the full thc-hydra overview →
About afrog
A Security Tool for Bug Bounty, Pentest and Red Teaming English • 中文 What is afrog afrog is a high performance vulnerability scanner with support for built in and custom PoCs. It is designed for fast verification, low false positives, and practical workflows across web targets, network services, PoC authoring, and SDK based integration. Install For source builds or go install , use Go 1.27 or later. Binary release Download the latest release from: Build from source Go install Quick start Scan a single target: Scan multiple targets from a file: Run only high and critical checks: Documentation The documentation is…
read the full afrog overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is thc-hydra or afrog more popular?
thc-hydra has 12,470 GitHub stars and afrog has 4,453. thc-hydra has the larger community by that measure.
Are thc-hydra and afrog free?
Both are open source. thc-hydra is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and afrog under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between thc-hydra and afrog?
thc-hydra is written in C and afrog 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, thc-hydra or afrog?
Choose thc-hydra if you want the larger community (12,470 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose afrog if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.