head to head · open source
sops vs wtf
sops has 23,147 GitHub stars, 1,081 forks, 446 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. wtf has 17,093 stars, 864 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. sops leads on adoption by 35% (23,147 vs 17,093 stars). sops is written in Go under MPL-2.0; wtf is written in Go under MPL-2.0. sops has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, wtf 5%. sops was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), 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
| sops | wtf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 17K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 864 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick sops if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick wtf if
- You want the wtf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and wtf fits your workflow better
About sops
SOPS, short for Secrets OPerationS, is an editor of encrypted files written in Go and released under the Mozilla Public License Version 2.0. It handles YAML, JSON, ENV, INI and BINARY formats, and it encrypts those files using AWS KMS, GCP KMS, Azure Key Vault, HuaweiCloud KMS, age, or PGP. The project lives in the cloud native infrastructure ecosystem: it started at Mozilla in 2015, was donated to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2023, and is now a CNCF Sandbox project under a new group of maintainers. It carries 23,121 stars and 1,080 forks, with documentation hosted at getsops.io.
About wtf
WTF (also known as wtfutil) is a free, open source personal information dashboard that runs in the terminal, built for developers and technical people who want at a glance access to important but infrequently consulted data without leaving the command line.
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Frequently asked questions
Is sops or wtf more popular?
sops has 23,147 GitHub stars and wtf has 17,093. sops has the larger community by that measure.
Are sops and wtf free?
Both are open source. sops is licensed under MPL-2.0 and wtf under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between sops and wtf?
sops is written in Go and wtf 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, sops or wtf?
Choose sops if you want the larger community (23,147 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose wtf if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.