head to head · open source
trivy vs goss
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goss has 5,971 stars, 501 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. trivy leads on adoption by 536% (37,961 vs 5,971 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| trivy | goss | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 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
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 goss
Goss is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based YAML test runner that validates the configuration of a server or container and can expose the result as a health endpoint, built for DevOps engineers and SREs who need fast, repeatable checks on Linux hosts, Docker containers, and Kubernetes workloads.
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 goss more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and goss has 5,971. 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 (37,961 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.