head to head · open source
Tracecat vs tenzir
Tracecat has 3,889 GitHub stars, 439 forks, 137 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tenzir has 770 stars, 110 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Tracecat leads on adoption by 405% (3,889 vs 770 stars). Tracecat is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; tenzir is written in C++ under BSD-3-Clause. Tracecat has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, tenzir 14%. Tracecat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (incident-response, 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.
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Side by side
| Tracecat | tenzir | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.9K | ★ 770 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 439 | ⑂ 110 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tracecat if
- You weight community size — 3.9K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 Tracecat
The agentic security automation platform. Introduction Tracecat is the open source security automation platform for teams and AI agents. Prompt to automations : build end to end automations with agents, workflows, cases, and tables from your own agent harness (e.g. Claude code, Codex, OpenCode). Code native : sync custom Python scripts from your Git repo into Tracecat. All in one : agents, workflows, lookup tables, and case management. Everything security teams need to automate work in one place. Deployment options : sign up for Tracecat managed Cloud, or self host with Docker, AWS Fargate, or Kubernetes Helm…
read the full Tracecat overview →
About tenzir
Data Pipelines for Security Teams Collect, transform, enrich, and route your telemetry—all in one place. What is Tenzir? Tenzir is the data pipeline engine for security teams. If you need to collect, parse, shape, normalize, aggregate, store, query, and route security telemetry data at scale, you'll love how our pipelines manage your dataflows. Tenzir makes it easy to quickly onboard and store data from numerous sources, reduce data volumes to optimize cloud and data costs, and execute detections and run analytics in stream. Get Started Check out our documentation where your find tutorials that walk your through…
read the full tenzir overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tracecat or tenzir more popular?
Tracecat has 3,889 GitHub stars and tenzir has 770. Tracecat has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tracecat and tenzir free?
Both are open source. Tracecat is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and tenzir under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tracecat and tenzir?
Tracecat is written in Python 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, Tracecat or tenzir?
Choose Tracecat if you want the larger community (3,889 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose tenzir if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.