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Nuclei

projectdiscovery/nuclei

An open-source alternative to Tenable Nessus.

Nuclei is a fast, customizable vulnerability scanner powered by the global security community and built on a simple YAML-based DSL, enabling collaboration to tackle trending vulnerabilities on the internet. It helps you find vulnerabilities in your applications, APIs, networks, DNS, and cloud configurations. (from the repository)

Stars
32,119
Licence
MIT
Last push
2026-10-19
Written in
Go
Source on GitHub ↗Project website ↗

Is it alive?

Four readings from the repository, each with the rule behind it. No blended score.
Activity
Active
Last push 8 days ago
Active: pushed within 90 days. Slowing: within a year. Quiet: longer.
Releases
Recent
v3.11.1, 3 months ago
Recent: a tagged release within six months. Some projects ship from the main branch and never tag.
Issues
98% closed
71 open · 2,946 closed
Share of all issues ever filed that are now closed. Under 20 issues is too few to read.
Momentum
+257 in 9 days
32,119 stars
Change in stars across our daily readings, over up to 30 days. Needs a week of readings.

What a business may do with it

PermissiveMIT

Use, change and sell it, including inside a closed product. Keep the copyright notice.

This describes the licence family GitHub identified, not legal advice about this project. The repository’s own LICENSE file is what binds you.

Run it yourself

Nuclei’s README does not show a docker run, docker compose up or helm install in a code block, so this page will not guess one. It may be a desktop app, a library, or documented on its website.

Nuclei’s own install instructions ↗

Where this page comes from

  • Stars, licence, activity, issues, releases and the self-host command are read from the repository. 2026-10-19
  • The pairing with Tenable Nessus and the category come from opensourcealternative.to, a community directory of open-source alternatives. We re-read it weekly.
  • Star momentum comes from our own daily readings of the repository. How we collect data