head to head · open source
vuls vs pika
vuls has 12,280 GitHub stars, 1,249 forks, 92 open issues and last shipped today. pika has 635 stars, 84 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. vuls leads on adoption by 1,834% (12,280 vs 635 stars). vuls is written in Go under GPL-3.0; pika is written in Go under Apache-2.0. vuls has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, pika 13%. vuls was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (golang, 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 | pika | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 635 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 84 |
| 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 pika if
- You want the pika 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 pika 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 pika
Pika is a lightweight probe monitoring system written in Go that gives operators real time infrastructure metrics alongside security auditing and tamper protection in one self hosted package.
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Frequently asked questions
Is vuls or pika more popular?
vuls has 12,280 GitHub stars and pika has 635. vuls has the larger community by that measure.
Are vuls and pika free?
Both are open source. vuls is licensed under GPL-3.0 and pika under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between vuls and pika?
vuls is written in Go and pika 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 pika?
Choose vuls if you want the larger community (12,280 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pika if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.