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Comparison · Infra & APIs
CrowdSec vs Dashy
A side-by-side editorial comparison of CrowdSec and Dashy — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
CrowdSec vs Dashy: at a glance
What is CrowdSec?
CrowdSec's WAF is growing a bot-detection challenge — log analysis meets active interception.
The feed carries only release candidates, roughly one every two to three months, and the WAF has been the centre of gravity across all of them: OpenAPI schema validation, request body size limits, arbitrary AND/OR mixing in rule conditions, more Coraza transformations exposed, RE2 enabled by default on Linux. The 1.8.0 candidate breaks that pattern by adding challenge-and-fingerprint bot detection, serving an interstitial page and evaluating the result against configured rules. The same candidate adds a dedicated Kubernetes datasource that reads logs from the apiserver directly, and HTTP helpers so parsers and scenarios can query external services. Two earlier candidates in the window are pure refactoring with no user-visible change.
What is Dashy?
The self-hosted dashboard finally let you drag things around instead of editing YAML.
Dashy tags a release per merged pull request, so the version number climbs several times a week while most tags carry a single dependabot bump or a translation file. The substance sits in 4.5.0, which added drag-and-drop editing of sections, items and widgets, rebuilt the GitHub stats widget on GitHub's own API with optional token authentication, and expanded number formatting in the custom-api widget. Point releases since have been an OIDC post-logout redirect, item sorting options, and an out-of-memory crash fix.
CrowdSec vs Dashy: editorial side-by-side
CrowdSec
3.8INFRA · APIS
CrowdSec's WAF is growing a bot-detection challenge — log analysis meets active interception.
◆ Current state
The feed carries only release candidates, roughly one every two to three months, and the WAF has been the centre of gravity across all of them: OpenAPI schema validation, request body size limits, arbitrary AND/OR mixing in rule conditions, more Coraza transformations exposed, RE2 enabled by default on Linux. The 1.8.0 candidate breaks that pattern by adding challenge-and-fingerprint bot detection, serving an interstitial page and evaluating the result against configured rules. The same candidate adds a dedicated Kubernetes datasource that reads logs from the apiserver directly, and HTTP helpers so parsers and scenarios can query external services. Two earlier candidates in the window are pure refactoring with no user-visible change.
◆ Where it's heading
CrowdSec started as a log-reading detection engine that handed decisions to external bouncers, and the WAF work has been steadily moving it into the request path. Bot detection completes that move: the product now generates its own signal by interrogating the client rather than only inferring from logs. The Kubernetes datasource and the expression-language HTTP helpers point the same way — fewer intermediaries between CrowdSec and both the telemetry and the enforcement point.
◆ Prediction
Expect the fingerprinting rules to become a shared, community-curated resource in the same way detection scenarios already are, since that is the pattern this project applies to every new signal it collects.
Dashy
6.3INFRA · APIS
The self-hosted dashboard finally let you drag things around instead of editing YAML.
◆ Current state
Dashy tags a release per merged pull request, so the version number climbs several times a week while most tags carry a single dependabot bump or a translation file. The substance sits in 4.5.0, which added drag-and-drop editing of sections, items and widgets, rebuilt the GitHub stats widget on GitHub's own API with optional token authentication, and expanded number formatting in the custom-api widget. Point releases since have been an OIDC post-logout redirect, item sorting options, and an out-of-memory crash fix.
◆ Where it's heading
The direction is away from configuration-as-a-file toward direct manipulation, which is the friction that has always separated Dashy from simpler homepage dashboards. The supporting work lines up with it: sorting controls, better handling of long titles, richer widget formatting. The auth-adjacent changes — OIDC logout redirect, logout destination — suggest people are running Dashy behind an identity provider for more than one user.
◆ Prediction
With drag-and-drop editing shipped, the follow-on is most likely persistence and permissions questions around who can edit a shared dashboard, though these notes do not state that. Expect the per-PR release cadence to continue producing mostly dependency tags.
Alternatives to CrowdSec and Dashy
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either CrowdSec or Dashy.
Jackett
A daily-shipping indexer proxy whose entire product is a scraper definition file that never stops rotting.
Sonarr
Sonarr's release feed is a two-month run of one-line fixes, most of them about qBittorrent auth.
k0s
k0s ships one fix four times a day — the cost of keeping four Kubernetes branches current.
Microcks
Microcks is quietly wiring LLM example generation into an API mocking tool built for Kubernetes.
BorgBackup
Borg's long-running 2.0 beta finally landed packs — and warned it dropped back to alpha quality.
See all CrowdSec alternatives → · See all Dashy alternatives →
Recent activity from CrowdSec and Dashy
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 1d agoDashyMissing German translations added
- 3d agoDashyOut-of-memory crash from unclosed secureConnect listeners fixed
- 4d agoDashyDependency bumps in the minor-and-patch group
- 6d agoDashyOIDC post-logout redirect URI support
- 7d agoCrowdSecCrowdSec 1.8 RC adds WAF bot detection and a Kubernetes datasource ⚡
- 8d agoDashyItems can be sorted by provider and by item ID
- 9d agoDashy4.5.0 adds drag-and-drop editing of sections, items and widgets ⚡
- 3mo agoCrowdSec1.7.8 RC: OpenAPI schema validation in the WAF
- 4mo agoCrowdSec1.7.7 RC: flexible WAF rule conditions and RE2 by default
- 6mo agoCrowdSec1.7.5 RC: acquisition and leaky-bucket refactoring
- 8mo agoCrowdSec1.7.4 RC2: acquisition module split and lint cleanup
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between CrowdSec and Dashy?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Dashy is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 3.8), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 1. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is CrowdSec better than Dashy?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Dashy is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 3.8), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 1. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to CrowdSec?
Top CrowdSec alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "CrowdSec alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/crowdsec for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Dashy?
Top Dashy alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Dashy alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dashy for the full list with editorial commentary on each.