head to head · open source
vuls vs KubeHound
vuls has 12,278 GitHub stars, 1,248 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. KubeHound has 1,004 stars, 67 forks, 30 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. vuls leads on adoption by 1,123% (12,278 vs 1,004 stars). vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0; KubeHound is written in Go under Apache-2.0. vuls has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, KubeHound 7%. 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-audit, security-automation), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| vuls | KubeHound | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 67 |
| 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 KubeHound if
- You want the KubeHound feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and KubeHound 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 KubeHound
KubeHound is an open source Go tool for Kubernetes security teams that automatically calculates attack paths between assets in a cluster and builds them into a queryable attack graph.
read the full KubeHound overview →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Threat Detection & Response projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Threat Detection & Response field.
Frequently asked questions
Is vuls or KubeHound more popular?
vuls has 12,278 GitHub stars and KubeHound has 1,004. vuls has the larger community by that measure.
Are vuls and KubeHound free?
Both are open source. vuls is licensed under GPL-3.0 and KubeHound under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vuls and KubeHound?
vuls is written in Go and KubeHound 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, vuls or KubeHound?
Choose vuls if you want the larger community (12,278 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose KubeHound if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.