head to head · open source
trivy vs aws-cdk
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. aws-cdk has 12,899 stars, 4,631 forks, 2,863 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 194% (37,961 vs 12,899 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; aws-cdk is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, aws-cdk 36%. aws-cdk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, infrastructure-as-code), 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
| trivy | aws-cdk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 4.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick trivy if
- You weight community size — 38K 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 aws-cdk if
- You want the aws-cdk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and aws-cdk fits your workflow better
About trivy
Trivy is an open source security scanner written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It is an Aqua Security open source project, hosted at trivy.dev, and it lives in the cloud native and DevSecOps ecosystem alongside container runtimes, Kubernetes clusters, and infrastructure as code tooling. The design separates two ideas: scanners, which describe the classes of security issue Trivy looks for, and targets, which describe where it looks. The README presents the project as a comprehensive and versatile scanner, and the topic list — containers, devsecops, docker, iac, infrastructure as code, kubernetes…
read the full trivy overview →
About aws-cdk
AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open source software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure in code and provisioning it through AWS CloudFormation. It lives in the AWS ecosystem and ships under the Apache 2.0 license, with the core implementation written in TypeScript. The framework offers a high level object oriented abstraction that lets developers define AWS resources imperatively using modern programming languages rather than writing raw CloudFormation templates by hand.
read the full aws-cdk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or aws-cdk more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and aws-cdk has 12,899. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and aws-cdk free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and aws-cdk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and aws-cdk?
trivy is written in Go and aws-cdk in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, trivy or aws-cdk?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,961 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose aws-cdk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.