head to head · open source
trivy vs tfsec
trivy has 37,969 GitHub stars, 692 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tfsec has 7,038 stars, 558 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. trivy leads on adoption by 439% (37,969 vs 7,038 stars). trivy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tfsec is written in Go under MIT. trivy has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, tfsec 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 (devsecops, go, hacktoberfest, 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.
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Side by side
| trivy | tfsec | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 692 | ⑂ 558 |
| 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 tfsec if
- You want the tfsec feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and tfsec 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 tfsec
tfsec is a static analysis security scanner for Terraform code, written in Go and released under the MIT license. It lives in the infrastructure as code and DevSecOps ecosystem, alongside tools such as linters and CI scanners. The project is now part of Trivy, Aqua Security's broader open source security scanner, and its Terraform scanning engine forms the foundation of Trivy's IaC and misconfiguration scanning capabilities. The repository remains available, but engineering attention is directed at Trivy going forward.
read the full tfsec overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or tfsec more popular?
trivy has 37,969 GitHub stars and tfsec has 7,038. trivy has the larger community by that measure.
Are trivy and tfsec free?
Both are open source. trivy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tfsec under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between trivy and tfsec?
trivy is written in Go and tfsec 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 tfsec?
Choose trivy if you want the larger community (37,969 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tfsec if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.