head to head · open source
vuls vs find-sec-bugs
vuls has 12,266 GitHub stars, 1,244 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. find-sec-bugs has 2,448 stars, 485 forks, 115 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. vuls leads on adoption by 401% (12,266 vs 2,448 stars). vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0; find-sec-bugs is written in Java under LGPL-3.0. vuls has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, find-sec-bugs 20%. vuls was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (security, security-audit), 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
| vuls | find-sec-bugs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-03-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 485 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick vuls if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick find-sec-bugs if
- You want the find-sec-bugs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and find-sec-bugs fits your workflow better
About vuls
Vuls is an agent less vulnerability scanner written in Go and licensed under GPL 3.0, aimed at system administrators and security teams that must find and track known vulnerabilities across Linux, FreeBSD, Windows and macOS hosts, containers, WordPress installs, programming language libraries and network devices without installing an agent on every machine.
About find-sec-bugs
OWASP Find Security Bugs is a SpotBugs plugin that performs static security audits — including taint analysis — of Java web applications and Android applications, and it also works with Kotlin, Groovy and Scala projects, for developers and security reviewers who scan JVM bytecode in an IDE, a build pipeline or SonarQube.
read the full find-sec-bugs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is vuls or find-sec-bugs more popular?
vuls has 12,266 GitHub stars and find-sec-bugs has 2,448. vuls has the larger community by that measure.
Are vuls and find-sec-bugs free?
Both are open source. vuls is licensed under GPL-3.0 and find-sec-bugs under LGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vuls and find-sec-bugs?
vuls is written in Go and find-sec-bugs in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, vuls or find-sec-bugs?
Choose vuls if you want the larger community (12,266 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose find-sec-bugs if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.