head to head · open source
trivy vs k8sgpt
trivy has 37,969 GitHub stars, 692 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. k8sgpt has 8,186 stars, 1,060 forks, 89 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 364% (37,969 vs 8,186 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 | ★ 38K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 692 | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 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
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 k8sgpt
k8sgpt is an Apache 2.0 tool written in Go that scans Kubernetes clusters, diagnoses and triages issues in plain English, built for SREs, platform engineers and DevOps teams who need a fast, readable explanation of why a cluster is misbehaving.
read the full k8sgpt overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or k8sgpt more popular?
trivy has 37,969 GitHub stars and k8sgpt has 8,186. 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 (37,969 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.