head to head · open source
trivy vs goss
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars, 818 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goss has 6,000 stars, 502 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. trivy leads on adoption by 549% (38,915 vs 6,000 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; goss is written in Go under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, goss 8%. trivy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (docker, go, golang, 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 | goss | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 818 | ⑂ 502 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick trivy if
- You weight community size — 39K 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 goss if
- You want the goss 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 goss fits your workflow better
About trivy
[![GitHub Release][release img]][release] [![Test][test img]][test] [![Go Report Card][go report img]][go report] [![License: Apache 2.0][license img]][license] [![GitHub Downloads][github downloads img]][release] ![Docker Pulls][docker pulls] [📖 Documentation][docs] Trivy ([pronunciation][pronunciation]) is a comprehensive and versatile security scanner. Trivy has scanners that look for security issues, and targets where it can find those issues. Targets (what Trivy can scan): Container Image Filesystem Git Repository (remote) Virtual Machine Image Kubernetes Scanners (what Trivy can find there): OS packages…
read the full trivy overview →
About goss
Goss Quick and Easy server validation Goss in 45 seconds Note: For testing containers see the dgoss wrapper. Also, user submitted wrapper scripts for Kubernetes kgoss and Docker Compose dcgoss. Note: For some Docker/Kubernetes healthcheck, health endpoint, and container ordering examples, see [my blog post][kubernetes simplified health checks]. Introduction What is Goss? Goss is a YAML based serverspec alternative tool for validating a server's configuration. It eases the process of writing tests by allowing the user to generate tests from the current system state. Once the test suite is written they can be…
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or goss more popular?
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars and goss has 6,000. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and goss free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and goss under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and goss?
trivy is written in Go and goss 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 goss?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (38,915 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose goss if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.