head to head · open source
trivy vs kics
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars, 691 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kics has 2,700 stars, 381 forks, 312 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 1,306% (37,961 vs 2,700 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; kics is written in Open Policy Agent under Apache-2.0. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, kics 14%. trivy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 7 topic tags (devsecops, golang, hacktoberfest, iac), 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 | kics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Open Policy Agent |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 691 | ⑂ 381 |
| 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 kics if
- You want the kics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Open Policy Agent
- You evaluated both and kics 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 kics
KICS is an open source security scanner for infrastructure as code projects. The project name stands for Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure, and the repository describes it as a tool for finding security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations early in the development cycle. It is published by Checkmarx under the Apache 2.0 license and is associated with the cloud native, DevSecOps, and application security ecosystems. The repository also lists topics such as infrastructure as code, security, and vulnerability detection.
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or kics more popular?
trivy has 37,961 GitHub stars and kics has 2,700. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and kics free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kics under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and kics?
trivy is written in Go and kics in Open Policy Agent. 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 kics?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,961 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kics if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.