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StackPatch vs vuls.io — the honest version

vuls.io is the obvious comparison and we won't pretend it isn't. It's free, open-source, mature, and supports more distros than we do. If you have the time and skill to run it, it's a great choice. This page is the side-by-side we'd want to read before paying us anything.

vuls.iofuture-architect/vuls

Side-by-side feature matrix

Green = clear advantage. Red = clear disadvantage. Grey = neutral / depends on context. We tried to be honest; if you find an inaccuracy in the vuls.io column, email us and we'll fix it.

Dimension
vuls.io
StackPatch
Price
Free, open source (GPLv3)
$99 lifetime founder seat or monthly tiers
Source code
Public — github.com/future-architect/vuls
Closed source — but bash/Python scanner is plain text and read-before-pipe
Setup time
Half a day. Install Go, vuls + go-cve-dictionary + goval-dictionary + gost + cve-search; download multi-GB DBs; wire scan + report flow.
Five seconds. curl https://mindsparkstack.com/scan.sh | bash
Where data lives
Your servers (self-hosted)
Our VPS — distro/kernel/package list only, no IPs, no hostnames, no env
Distros covered
Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, Oracle, Amazon Linux, openSUSE, Alpine, FreeBSD, Windows
Ubuntu + Debian + Alpine + AlmaLinux + Rocky Linux (live). RHEL/CentOS, Amazon Linux on the V2 roadmap.
Recommended actions
Lists the CVE; you read it and figure out the fix command yourself
Per-finding playbook: exact apt / kernel-reboot / modprobe one-liner
Public audit URL
None — scan output is internal HTML/JSON
Yes — share /patch/audit/your-server with customers as a posture artifact
Polling cadence
Whatever you cron yourself
Hourly inventory + 30-min CVE poll, all managed
DB maintenance
You rebuild go-cve-dictionary, gost, goval-dictionary on a schedule
Zero — we run the USN + NVD pollers
Notifications
Slack, email — but you tune severity gates yourself
Email + Discord planned for V1.5; severity threshold per project
Best for
Security engineer with half a day and ongoing patch-ops time
Solo founder running 1–10 Linux boxes who wants the answer in five minutes
Maturity
Battle-tested since 2016, 10K+ GitHub stars
V1 launched 2026-04-30. Used in production on our own VPS.

Pick vuls.io if

You have a security engineer and time to invest.

  • You run upstream RHEL (paid Red Hat), CentOS Stream, Amazon Linux, openSUSE, or FreeBSD — distros we don't cover yet (Alpine + AlmaLinux + Rocky Linux shipped 2026-04-30).
  • Compliance forbids any package data leaving your network.
  • You already have a CI runner with disk and CPU to host a multi-GB CVE database.
  • You want full control over scan logic, severity gating, and reporting.
  • You enjoy a Sunday-afternoon project and don't mind reading Go.
vuls.io install guide

Pick StackPatch if

You're a one-person SaaS shop and want the answer in five minutes.

  • You run 1–10 Ubuntu, Debian, Alpine, AlmaLinux, or Rocky Linux boxes (Hostinger, Hetzner, Linode, DigitalOcean, Docker hosts, etc.).
  • You don't want to maintain a CVE database, vuln scanner, or report pipeline.
  • You want the exact apt / kernel-reboot / modprobe-blacklist command, not a CVE link.
  • You want a public audit URL to share with paying customers as a trust artifact.
  • You'd rather pay $99 once than spend half a day setting up a free tool you'll forget to maintain.
Run the free quickscan first

The middle: what to actually ask yourself

  1. 1. How many hours of patch ops did you do last quarter? If the honest answer is <2, vuls.io is overkill — you'll set it up and never look at the report. StackPatch is the “set it and look at the audit URL when a customer asks” tier.
  2. 2. Do you have someone on call who reads CVEs? vuls assumes yes. StackPatch ships the apt one-liner so the answer can be no.
  3. 3. What's your cost of one missed CVE? For us as a one-person SaaS shop with paying customers, one breach is fatal. $99 to make a class of mistakes structurally harder is a deal. For a hobbyist VPS, vuls is free and totally fine.
  4. 4. Will you actually maintain the vuls DB? go-cve-dictionary, goval-dictionary, gost, cve-search — they all need cron-rebuilds, or your scans go stale and you don't notice. If “yes” isn't a confident yes, you'll silently be running a stale scanner. We rebuild ours every 30 minutes.

Try the free quickscan before paying anyone — including us.

One curl command, no signup. Reads only your distro / codename / kernel / package list. Source is rendered as plain text so you can read it before piping. Five seconds in, you'll know what your stack looks like to a CVE matcher and whether StackPatch — or vuls.io — is the right call.

Run the free quickscanSee StackPatch ($99 lifetime)