head to head · open source
trivy vs k8sgpt
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars, 818 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. k8sgpt has 8,289 stars, 1,090 forks, 89 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 369% (38,915 vs 8,289 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; k8sgpt is written in Go under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, k8sgpt 13%. k8sgpt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | k8sgpt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 818 | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 k8sgpt if
- You want the k8sgpt 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 k8sgpt 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 k8sgpt
k8sgpt is a tool for scanning your Kubernetes clusters, diagnosing, and triaging issues in simple English. It has SRE experience codified into its analyzers and helps to pull out the most relevant information to enrich it with AI. Out of the box integration with OpenAI, Azure, Cohere, Amazon Bedrock, Google Gemini and local models. Sister project: Check out sympozium for managing agents in Kubernetes. Table of Contents Overview Installation Quick Start Analyzers Examples LLM AI Backends Key Features Model Context Protocol (MCP) Documentation Contributing Community CLI Installation Linux/Mac via brew or RPM based…
read the full k8sgpt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or k8sgpt more popular?
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars and k8sgpt has 8,289. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and k8sgpt free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and k8sgpt under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and k8sgpt?
trivy is written in Go and k8sgpt 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 k8sgpt?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (38,915 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose k8sgpt if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.