head to head · open source
thc-hydra vs vuls
thc-hydra has 12,470 GitHub stars, 2,698 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. vuls has 12,330 stars, 1,248 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped yesterday. thc-hydra leads on adoption by 1% (12,470 vs 12,330 stars). thc-hydra is written in C under AGPL-3.0; vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0. thc-hydra has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, vuls 10%. vuls was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | vuls | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 12K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 vuls if
- You want the vuls feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and vuls 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…
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About vuls
Vuls: VULnerability Scanner Vulnerability scanner for Linux/FreeBSD, agent less, written in Go. Twitter: @vuls en Abstract For a system administrator, having to perform security vulnerability analysis and software update on a daily basis can be a burden. To avoid downtime in a production environment, it is common for a system administrator to choose not to use the automatic update option provided by the package manager and to perform update manually. This leads to the following problems. The system administrator will have to constantly watch out for any new vulnerabilities in NVD (National Vulnerability…
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Frequently asked questions
Is thc-hydra or vuls more popular?
thc-hydra has 12,470 GitHub stars and vuls has 12,330. thc-hydra has the larger community by that measure.
Are thc-hydra and vuls free?
Both are open source. thc-hydra is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and vuls under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between thc-hydra and vuls?
thc-hydra is written in C and vuls 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 vuls?
Choose thc-hydra if you want the larger community (12,470 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose vuls if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.