head to head · open source
trivy vs tfsec
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars, 818 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tfsec has 7,059 stars, 560 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. trivy leads on adoption by 451% (38,915 vs 7,059 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 | ★ 39K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 818 | ⑂ 560 |
| 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 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
[![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 tfsec
📣 tfsec to Trivy Migration As part of our goal to provide a comprehensive open source security solution for all, we have been consolidating all of our scanning related efforts in one place, and that is Trivy. Over the past year, tfsec has laid the foundations to Trivy's IaC & misconfigurations scanning capabilities, including Terraform scanning, which has been natively supported in Trivy for a long time now. Going forward we want to encourage the tfsec community to transition over to Trivy. Moving to Trivy gives you the same excellent Terraform scanning engine, with some extra benefits: 1. Access to more…
read the full tfsec overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is trivy or tfsec more popular?
trivy has 38,915 GitHub stars and tfsec has 7,059. 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 (38,915 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tfsec if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.