head to head · open source
trivy vs dagger
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dagger has 16,261 stars, 924 forks, 156 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 133% (37,961 vs 16,261 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; dagger is written in Go under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, dagger 6%. dagger was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (containers, docker), 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| trivy | dagger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 924 |
| 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 dagger if
- You want the dagger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dagger 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 dagger
Dagger is an open source automation engine for software delivery, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It builds, tests and ships any codebase, and it runs locally, inside a CI server, or directly in the cloud. The project lives in the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD ecosystem, where it occupies the space normally filled by shell scripts and proprietary pipeline YAML. It has been developed for roughly seven years and carries a substantial community footprint, with more than sixteen thousand stars and over nine hundred forks on GitHub.
read the full dagger overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or dagger more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and dagger has 16,261. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and dagger free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dagger under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and dagger?
trivy is written in Go and dagger 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, trivy or dagger?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,961 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dagger if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.