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Alternatives to Shannon

5 editor-selected alternatives · Shannon overview →

source: tools.alternatives · stored order · active records only; review scores are annotations and never change membership or order

A directional evidence panel appears only when the substitute rationale, trade-offs, sources, and verification date have been recorded. Older selections without that panel remain visible but are unclassified under the new evidence contract.

garak logo
1

garak

open sourcefreeexplicit relation

garak is NVIDIA's open-source LLM vulnerability scanner for red-teaming AI models and applications. Probes for prompt injection, data leakage, hallucination, toxicity, encoding-based attacks, and dozens of other vulnerability categories. Runs automated attack sequences against any LLM endpoint and generates detailed vulnerability reports. Features a modular probe/detector architecture that is extensible with custom attack patterns. Named after the Star Trek character known for deception.

garak is a 100% open-source LLM vulnerability scanner developed by NVIDIA and the open-source community, released under the Apache 2.0 license. It is completely free to use and automate in CI/CD pipelines.
Guardrails AI logo
2

Guardrails AI

open sourceexplicit relation

Guardrails AI is an open-source Python and JavaScript framework for validating and structuring LLM outputs using composable Guards built from a Hub of pre-built validators. It handles structured data extraction with Pydantic models, content safety checks including toxicity, PII detection, competitor mentions, and bias filtering, plus automatic re-prompting when validation fails. The Guardrails Hub offers dozens of validators from regex matching to hallucination detection via LLM judges.

100% open-source core and Guardrails Hub (Apache-2.0, $0 self-hosted). Guardrails Cloud offers managed validation APIs, centralized telemetry, enterprise governance, and dedicated support.
LLM Guard logo
3

LLM Guard

open sourcefreeexplicit relation

LLM Guard is an open-source security toolkit by Protect AI that provides 15 input scanners and 20 output scanners to protect LLM applications from prompt injection, PII leakage, toxic content, secrets exposure, and data exfiltration. Each scanner is modular and independent — pick the ones you need, configure thresholds, and chain them into a pipeline. The library works with any LLM and has been downloaded over 2.5 million times. MIT licensed, Python 3.9+.

Open-source security toolkit and LLM firewall under the MIT License ($0 software cost). Runs entirely self-hosted as a local Python package or containerized microservice without mandatory cloud dependencies or telemetry fees. Commercial Protect AI enterprise platforms (Guardian, Recon, ModelScan) are available under custom enterprise contracts.
Agentic Radar logo
4

Agentic Radar

open sourceexplicit relation

Agentic Radar is an open-source CLI security scanner that maps attack surfaces in agentic AI workflows. It detects MCP servers, visualizes agent tool chains, and validates against OWASP LLM Top 10 vulnerabilities including prompt injection and excessive agency. Supports scanning CrewAI, LangGraph, AutoGen, and Semantic Kernel pipelines. Built by SPLX AI with active development and MCP-specific detection capabilities added for the growing MCP ecosystem.

100% free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license ($0 software cost). Agentic Radar is an open-source automated security testing and vulnerability scanner for AI agents and LLM applications with zero licensing fees.
osv-scanner logo
5

osv-scanner

open sourceexplicit relation

OSV-Scanner is Google's official open-source vulnerability scanner that checks your project's dependencies against the OSV.dev database — the largest open vulnerability database covering all major ecosystems. Written in Go, it supports lockfiles from npm, pip, Maven, Cargo, Go modules, and more, providing actionable remediation guidance and CI/CD integration for automated security scanning.

100% free and open-source under the Apache-2.0 license ($0 software cost). OSV-Scanner is Google's official vulnerability scanner for dependencies, containers, lockfiles, and SBOMs using the Open Source Vulnerabilities (OSV) database with zero licensing fees.

Open-source Shannon alternatives

garak, Guardrails AI, LLM Guard, Agentic Radar, osv-scanner — see all open-source developer tools.

Free Shannon alternatives

garak, LLM Guard offer a free plan or free tier.

More AI Security & DevSecOps tools

same category, not editor-selected alternatives — see how Shannon compares →

OpenLITOpenLIT is an open-source AI engineering platform that provides OpenTelemetry-native observability for LLM applications. It combines distributed tracing, evaluation, prompt management, a secrets vault, and GPU telemetry in a single self-hostable stack. With 50+ integrations across LLM providers and frameworks, it lets teams monitor AI applications using their existing observability backends like Grafana, Datadog, or Jaeger.CiliumCilium is a CNCF Graduated, Apache-2.0 project for Kubernetes networking, security, and observability using eBPF. It can replace kube-proxy, enforce identity-aware L3-L7 network policies, and add Hubble flow observability plus Tetragon runtime-security signals. Current source checks support GKE Dataplane V2 using Cilium/eBPF and Azure CNI Powered by Cilium for AKS.MCP InspectorMCP Inspector is the official interactive developer tool from the Model Context Protocol team for testing, debugging, and validating MCP servers. It provides a visual interface to inspect available tools, test transport configurations, export configs for different clients, and verify protocol compliance during MCP server development.PlaywrightCross-browser E2E testing framework by Microsoft supporting Chromium, Firefox, and WebKit with one API. Features auto-waiting, tracing with timeline/screenshots/DOM snapshots, codegen for recording tests, and parallel execution. Component testing for React, Vue, Svelte. Built-in API testing, network mocking, and mobile emulation. Known for reliability and speed vs Selenium/Cypress. 70K+ GitHub stars, rapidly becoming the E2E standard.MCP-ScanMCP-Scan is a security tool that scans MCP servers for vulnerabilities including tool poisoning, prompt injection, cross-origin escalation, and rug pull attacks. Acquired by Snyk in 2026, it is the first dedicated security scanner for the MCP ecosystem. It analyzes tool descriptions, permissions, and behavior patterns to detect malicious or compromised MCP servers before they can exploit AI agents.PangolinIdentity-based remote access platform built on WireGuard that combines reverse proxy and VPN capabilities. Pangolin supports clientless browser access for web apps and client-based private-resource access across macOS, iOS, Windows, Linux, and Android, with zero-trust rules, peer-to-peer tunnels, automatic SSL, SSO/OIDC options, and cloud or self-hosted deployment.DeepEvalDeepEval is an Apache-2.0 Python framework for evaluating LLM apps, RAG systems, agents, MCP workflows, and safety behavior with repeatable test cases. It works locally and in CI/CD, then connects to Confident AI for hosted reports, observability, red teaming, and governance when teams need shared evidence instead of ad-hoc prompt reviews and manual QA.reviewdogreviewdog is an open-source automated code review tool that integrates any linter or static analysis tool with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Gitea pull requests. Parses output in errorformat, Checkstyle XML, SARIF, and JSON formats to post inline review comments on changed lines only. Works with GitHub Actions, Travis CI, CircleCI, GitLab CI, and Jenkins. Supports 40+ languages through universal linter adapter architecture.LangfuseLangfuse is an open-source LLM engineering platform with 29K+ GitHub stars for tracing, evaluating, and monitoring AI applications. Acquired by ClickHouse, it provides detailed traces of LLM calls, prompt management with versioning, dataset-based evaluation, user feedback collection, and cost tracking. Framework-agnostic with native integrations for LangChain, LlamaIndex, OpenAI SDK, and Vercel AI SDK. Offers both self-hosted deployment and a managed cloud service.

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FAQ

Which Shannon alternative is listed first?

garak is first in the editor-selected list of 5 Shannon alternatives. The stored order is editorial; review scores do not determine membership or position.

Are there open-source Shannon alternatives?

Yes — garak, Guardrails AI, LLM Guard, and more are open source.

Are there free Shannon alternatives?

Yes — garak, LLM Guard offer a free plan or free tier.