head to head · open source
trivy vs freelens
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. freelens has 5,588 stars, 331 forks, 223 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 579% (37,961 vs 5,588 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; freelens is written in TypeScript under MIT. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, freelens 6%. freelens was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (containers, 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 | freelens | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 331 |
| 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 freelens if
- You want the freelens feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and freelens 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 freelens
Freelens is a free and open source user interface for managing Kubernetes clusters. It is distributed as a standalone desktop application for macOS, Windows, and Linux, and it exists inside the cloud native ecosystem alongside the containers, DevOps, and Kubernetes tooling that its topic list names. The project is written in TypeScript and released under the MIT license, and it reached its current shape over roughly two years of development. The public repository carries more than five thousand stars and over three hundred forks, with an active issue tracker and community channels on Discord and Reddit.…
read the full freelens overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or freelens more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and freelens has 5,588. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and freelens free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and freelens under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and freelens?
trivy is written in Go and freelens 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 freelens?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,961 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose freelens if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.