mkYARA vs AutoYara: 2026 Comparison
mkYARA is a free threat hunting tool. AutoYara is a free threat hunting tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best threat hunting fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of available product data, here is our conclusion:
Malware analysts and threat hunters who need to convert suspicious code samples into detection rules fast should start with mkYARA; it strips weeks of manual YARA rule writing down to minutes by automating the pattern extraction from executable binaries. The free pricing and 221 GitHub stars signal real adoption among security teams without budget for commercial rule generation platforms. Skip this if your team relies on pre-built rule sets from vendors; mkYARA assumes you're reverse-engineering unknown malware and need custom signatures, not managing an existing detection library.
Threat hunters working with malware samples at mid-sized SOCs will move faster with AutoYara because it eliminates the manual labor of writing YARA rules from scratch; the biclustering algorithm actually finds signal in sample sets that would take analysts hours to pattern-match by hand. At 78 GitHub stars and free pricing, it's mature enough for production use without vendor lock-in. Skip this if your team needs a GUI-driven rule builder or integration with your SIEM; AutoYara is a command-line tool for analysts who already know how to validate rules and understand the tradeoffs between detection breadth and false positives.
