head to head · open source
trivy vs kics
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars, 818 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kics has 2,730 stars, 385 forks, 312 open issues and last shipped yesterday. trivy leads on adoption by 1,325% (38,915 vs 2,730 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%. kics 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 | ★ 39K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Open Policy Agent |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 818 | ⑂ 385 |
| 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 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
[![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 kics
Find security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations early in the development cycle of your infrastructure as code with KICS by Checkmarx. KICS stands for K eeping I nfrastructure as C ode S ecure, it is open source and is a must have for any cloud native project. Supported Platforms <a href="
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or kics more popular?
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars and kics has 2,730. 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 (38,915 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.