head to head · open source
vuls vs npq
vuls has 12,339 GitHub stars, 1,246 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. npq has 1,796 stars, 43 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. vuls leads on adoption by 587% (12,339 vs 1,796 stars). vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0; npq is written in JavaScript under Apache-2.0. vuls has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, npq 2%. vuls was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (security, security-audit, security-tools), 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 | npq | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-11 | 2026-11-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 43 |
| 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 npq if
- You want the npq feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and npq fits your workflow better
About vuls
Vuls: VULnerability Scanner Vulnerability scanner for Linux/FreeBSD, agent less, written in Go. Twitter: @vuls en Abstract For a system administrator, having to perform security vulnerability analysis and software update on a daily basis can be a burden. To avoid downtime in a production environment, it is common for a system administrator to choose not to use the automatic update option provided by the package manager and to perform update manually. This leads to the following problems. The system administrator will have to constantly watch out for any new vulnerabilities in NVD (National Vulnerability…
About npq
npq allows you to audit npm packages before you install them TL;DR how to use npq: What it does: the npx tool downloads and execute npq package, runs an install check for the express package and dry run means npq exists regardless of success/errors . Here's a screenshot of npq in action: Media coverage about npq: As mentioned on Thomas Gentilhomme's French book of Become a Node.js Developer Tao Bojlén's A web of trust for npm Zander's favorite list of command line tools Ran Bar Zik's npq review to install safe modules ostechnix's How To Safely Install Packages Using Npm Or Yarn On Linux debricked's How to…
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Frequently asked questions
Is vuls or npq more popular?
vuls has 12,339 GitHub stars and npq has 1,796. vuls has the larger community by that measure.
Are vuls and npq free?
Both are open source. vuls is licensed under GPL-3.0 and npq under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vuls and npq?
vuls is written in Go and npq in JavaScript. 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 npq?
Choose vuls if you want the larger community (12,339 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose npq if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.