head to head · open source
trivy vs checkov
trivy has 37,969 GitHub stars, 692 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. checkov has 9,011 stars, 1,412 forks, 170 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 321% (37,969 vs 9,011 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; checkov is written in Python under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, checkov 16%. checkov was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (hacktoberfest, infrastructure-as-code, kubernetes), 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 | checkov | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 692 | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 checkov if
- You want the checkov feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and checkov 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 checkov
Checkov is an open source static code analysis and software composition analysis tool that scans infrastructure as code, container images and open source packages for security and compliance misconfigurations during the build, and it is aimed at developers, DevOps engineers and security teams who want those checks to run before anything is deployed to AWS, Azure or Google Cloud.
read the full checkov overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or checkov more popular?
trivy has 37,969 GitHub stars and checkov has 9,011. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and checkov free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and checkov under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and checkov?
trivy is written in Go and checkov in Python. 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 checkov?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,969 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose checkov if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.