mantis vs pr-lens

The two are close in size: 2.5k stars for mantis, 2.1k for pr-lens. Over the days we have tracked them mantis moved +411.8% and pr-lens +186.6%, so mantis is growing faster right now.

They split the axes: mantis leads on context depth, pr-lens on setup ease.

Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.

Where they stand today

A modular, stack-agnostic suite of security review skills that lets coding agents find, reproduce, dedupe, and patch vulnerabilities with sandboxed execution and a sequential pipeline.

Stars
2.5k
Tracked growth
+411.8%
Maturity
●●●●●
Last commit
5h ago
Language
Python
License
Apache-2.0
Cost to run
Your API key; model/compute costs apply.

Generates animated architecture and data-flow diagrams that visualize a PR’s blast radius and step-by-step walkthroughs directly inside the pull request.

Stars
2.1k
Tracked growth
+186.6%
Maturity
●●●●●
Last commit
2d ago
Language
TypeScript
License
MIT
Cost to run
Free for open source; otherwise your API key
0%+412%87 tracked days
google/mantiscoldteadotai/pr-lens

Six axes, head to head

Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.

Axismantispr-lens
Context depth
How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository.
●●●●●
Whole-repo analysis
●●●●●
Diff + related files
Noise control
How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only.
●●●●●
Dedupe & filters
●●●●●
Configurable filters
Customization
How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config.
●●●●●
Customizable prompts
●●●●●
Config file options
Privacy
Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only.
●●●●●
Self-hostable
●●●●●
Cloud API key
Model freedom
Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one.
●●●●●
Bring-your-own-key
●●●●●
Bring-your-own key
Setup ease
What it takes to get a first useful run out of it.
●●●●●
Agent + API key
●●●●●
One-click App

Which one to pick

Pick mantis if…

Security-first — pick Mantis when you need a focused, extensible toolkit of agent skills specialized for end-to-end vulnerability discovery, reproduction, and patching in isolated environments.

  • Context depth: Whole-repo analysis (5/5 against 3/5)
Runs in cli, coding-agent-plugin, ci, pr-bot. Works with byok, gemini.

Pick pr-lens if…

Visual-first — install the GitHub App to get animated architecture and data-flow diagrams posted automatically to every PR so you can understand a change before reading its code.

  • Setup ease: One-click App (5/5 against 3/5)
Runs in pr-bot, github-action, ci, cli, coding-agent-plugin, web-app. Works with byok, openai, gemini.

What people want from each one

Questions people ask

Is mantis better than pr-lens?

They split the axes: mantis leads on context depth, pr-lens on setup ease. mantis is worth picking when security-first — pick Mantis when you need a focused, extensible toolkit of agent skills specialized for end-to-end vulnerability discovery, reproduction, and patching in isolated environments.

Which of mantis and pr-lens keeps my code private?

mantis: Self-hostable (4/5). pr-lens: Cloud API key (3/5).

What does each one cost to run?

mantis: Your API key; model/compute costs apply.. pr-lens: Free for open source; otherwise your API key.

Full profiles: google/mantis and coldteadotai/pr-lens. Everything else in Code review agents.