An honest comparison

Compared with the products people actually buy

40 capabilities, scored out of five against Snyk, GitHub Advanced Security, Semgrep, Checkmarx One and GitGuardian. 15 rows go against us, 18 go for us and 7 are level. Every row says why, and the ones we lose say what the other product does better.

A comparison where the author wins everything is an advertisement. If you read one row on this page, read the first one. Every row opens to say why it was scored the way it was, and what the others do better.

The two rows that count more than once

Every other row on this page is about finding a problem after it is in the repository. Two are about keeping it out, and weak code that never lands needs no finding, no triage and no fix. Blocking a secret at push counts five times, because a pushed secret is in the history for good the moment it lands. Blocking a risky merge, holding a pull request that adds a new finding, counts three times. Git Code Review can do neither today. GitHub Advanced Security does both best, and is the only product here that refuses a secret at push on GitHub.com itself.

158/230

Git Code Review · 69%

150/230

Checkmarx One · 65%

149/230

GitHub Advanced Security · 65%

132/230

Snyk · 57%

130/230

Semgrep · 57%

112/230

GitGuardian · 49%

does thirty of the forty

The totals are the least useful thing here. A product that wins on interprocedural analysis and loses on price is not "behind by nine points"; it is a different purchase. Read the rows that matter to you. Where a row is something a product does not cover at all, the cell says no coverage, and it counts as nothing in that product's total: a buyer gets none of it. Two rows count more than once, for the reason above, and they are the two we score lowest on.

Capability	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Support and the company behind it	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Somebody to call Why these scores First row, and the one we lose worst. Snyk, GitHub, Semgrep and Checkmarx all sell a contract with a human on the end of it and a target for answering. This is a project on a server, and when it breaks the person fixing it is you. If that matters where you work it matters more than every other row on this page put together, and nothing below changes it. The others: GitHub support comes with the enterprise agreement most large organizations already have, which makes it the easiest of the three to actually use. Snyk runs tiered support with named contacts higher up the plans. Semgrep is smaller but responsive and its engineers are reachable. Checkmarx One sells paid support with a named success manager and onboarding help. GitGuardian includes a named success manager on its larger plans and sells extended support hours, not around the clock.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
Here in five years Why these scores One author, one repository, MIT licensed. The license means you keep what you have and can fork it, which is worth something real. It is not worth as much as a company with revenue. The others: GitHub Advanced Security is part of Microsoft and is not going anywhere. Snyk and Semgrep are funded companies with large customer bases. All three are safer bets than a single maintainer, and pretending otherwise would be silly. Checkmarx One is a long established company, privately owned since 2020. GitGuardian is venture backed and raised a fifty million dollar round in February 2026.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
What it costs Why these scores Free, MIT, no seat count, no repository count, no committer count. Scan two hundred repositories or two thousand and the number is the same. The others: GHAS is priced per active committer and on a large estate it is the most expensive of the three by a distance. Snyk prices per contributing developer with a free tier that runs out quickly on a real estate. Semgrep has a genuinely usable free tier and paid tiers per contributor. Everybody except us gets more expensive as the team grows. Checkmarx One is quoted per contributing developer, with modules added on top, and lands at the expensive end of this page. GitGuardian is free for up to twenty five developers and quoted per active developer above that.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Credentials	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Secrets in full history Why these scores Three engines, gitleaks and TruffleHog and the host's own alerts, over every commit on every branch rather than the current checkout. A key deleted last year is still in the history and that is where most of them are. Findings say whether the value is still live in a branch head or only in history. The others: GHAS secret scanning is excellent and has one advantage we cannot match: partner alerting, where GitHub tells the issuer directly. It is GitHub only. Snyk does not really do secrets; it is not what the product is for. Semgrep added secrets and it is competent, with validation on a good list of providers. Checkmarx One scans full git history for over a hundred and seventy secret types, built on its open source 2ms, with a pre commit hook and a server side pre receive hook on self managed hosts. GitGuardian is the specialist here: every commit on every branch of every repository it watches, then every push in real time, and the same engine over Slack, Teams, Jira, Confluence and container registries. It also watches all of public GitHub for your company's keys, which nobody else on this page does.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Checking a key still works Why these scores The strongest signal in the product. A candidate is sent to the provider that issued it, and a verified finding outranks everything else on the page. It also drives the difference between "this looks like a key" and "this key opens something". The others: GHAS validity checks cover a good set of partners and are one click on the finding. Semgrep validates too. Snyk has nothing here. Ours covers whatever TruffleHog covers, which is the widest list of the three, but theirs is better integrated into the workflow. Checkmarx One validates a secret live as valid, invalid or unknown where the rule supports it, and publishes no list of which providers those are. GitGuardian checks validity for 482 of its 643 specific detectors, rechecks open ones in the background, and for some keys says what they can reach.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Real key or example Why these scores Entropy floors, a length floor, character diversity, placeholder patterns matched against the value and path patterns matched against the file, all of it editable from a page with a test box, and every shipped rule can be turned off individually with a record of who did it. On a twenty repository corpus this is the difference between 271 credential findings and several thousand. The others: GHAS applies its own filtering and does not let you see or change it. Semgrep exposes some tuning. None of them lets an administrator write a rule, test it against a sample and see who turned what off. Checkmarx One scores a secret on CVSS plus the validation result, and its detection rules can be edited. GitGuardian runs generic findings past a model that removes likely false positives, and has path and pattern exclusions with a test box and detectors that can be turned off one by one.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Code analysis	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Finding vulnerable code Why these scores semgrep across thirteen rule packs, plus gosec on Go where it analyzes a package rather than a file, plus rules of this product's own where the public packs were silent. Measured rather than assumed: twenty four weakness classes an independent scanner reports on one estate, against a hundred and eighty rules here. Twenty two were covered, several better than the comparison. The two that were not, cross site scripting in the browser and open redirect, are shipped now and always on, and JavaScript written inside a page rather than in a module is extracted and read, which semgrep will not do on its own. Still honest about what the base is: the free semgrep rules. The others: All three are better at this and it is their core product. CodeQL in GHAS is a genuinely deep engine with years of query development behind it. Snyk Code is fast and has good precision. Semgrep Pro rules are the commercial half of the engine we use for free. Checkmarx One is SAST first and has been for twenty years, across a very long list of languages.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
Dataflow across files Why these scores The clearest gap in the product. Free semgrep reads one file at a time, so a tainted value crossing a function boundary into another file is invisible to it. gosec closes this for Go and nothing closes it for Java, PHP or Ruby yet. No amount of rule tuning fixes it; it needs a different engine per language. The others: Cross file, cross function dataflow is exactly what CodeQL, Snyk Code and Semgrep Pro sell. This is the half of static analysis that is genuinely hard and they have all built it. If interprocedural taint tracking is what you are buying, buy one of them. Checkmarx One follows data through the whole program and points at the single best place to fix a group of flows.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
Which engine found it Why these scores Where two engines see the same line, the finding says so and its confidence goes up. Where only the deeper engine saw it, the finding says that too. Agreement is a signal and blending it into one number throws it away. The others: The commercial products run one engine per language and present a single verdict, which is simpler and gives up this information. Not a big row, but it is ours. Checkmarx One gives one verdict per finding. GitGuardian has one engine and names the detector that matched.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Judging context Why these scores A fidelity pass reads the file around each finding and can say "not applicable" with a sentence: the value is cast to an integer before output, the header was already sent, the input is a fixed enum. The verdict is on the row and a person can disagree with the reasoning because the reasoning is printed. The questions it asks are ones the line itself answers. Does this subprocess call reach a shell, and are its arguments a list. Does this log line write a credential, or does it merely mention one while writing the exception, which is what an honest error message in an authentication path is bound to do. Is this rule about a framework the repository does not use, decided from manifests that were actually read rather than from their absence. And is this file code at all: on one estate a fifth of everything open was a code rule matching a pattern inside a run log, and a log is a record of something that happened rather than a program. Credentials found in those same logs are untouched, because a token committed inside one is exposed exactly as much as one in source and rather more quietly. The others: All three do some contextual filtering and none of them shows you the argument. When Snyk or CodeQL drops a finding you do not find out, and when it keeps one you cannot see what it considered. Checkmarx One has an AI findings analysis that suppresses likely false positives; how much of its reasoning a reader sees is not clear from its documentation. GitGuardian feeds the context of a secret, a test file or a production one, into a risk score and its false positive model, without a written verdict on the code around it.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
AI	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
AI validation that learns Why these scores Validate with AI hands a model the finding, the flagged line, the code around it, the advisory and the decisions already made nearby, one finding or five hundred at a time. A lower reading lowers the grade, never on a credential or a known exploited package and never over a person's own regrade. The part we have not seen elsewhere is what happens next: every answer becomes a narrow learned rule with a synthetic test, so the next finding it covers, in a bulk run or on a scan, is answered without asking the model again, and a model that later disagrees retires the rule and puts its grades back. It is your model: Claude, anything that speaks the OpenAI API including one you host, or an internal gateway. Not a five, because it is off until somebody configures a provider and pays for it, and it suggests a fix in words rather than writing one. The others: Semgrep Assistant is the closest and is good: it triages findings, flags likely false positives, and remembers what your team decided so later triage improves. GitHub's Copilot Autofix writes the fix for a code scanning alert, which is a real thing we do not do, though it does not regrade anything. Snyk puts AI into fixing rather than triage. Checkmarx One has the most AI of the four: an assistant in the editor, AI findings analysis that suppresses likely false positives, a triage and remediation assistant its documentation still lists as upcoming, and an MCP server. Every one of them runs the model in the vendor's cloud; here the model is whichever one you point it at. GitGuardian uses models to remove false positives, score risk, and judge whether a public leak is yours, and has an assistant in early testing; we found nothing that learns rules from your own decisions.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Dependencies	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Vulnerable dependencies Why these scores A real SBOM from syft, then grype and OSV over it, with KEV and EPSS on top. Good, standards based and free. Two holes in the reading were closed recently: a .NET repository that had never been built looked like a repository with no dependencies, because none of syft's three .NET catalogers reads a csproj, and a pom that names three libraries and resolves to forty was being read as three. The project files are parsed directly now, and the resolved tree is asked of the host, which has already worked it out and costs one request. Two things keep it off a five. The resolved tree only exists where the host publishes one, which today means GitHub; on the other eleven providers what is declared is still what is read, so a Java project there is read as the three libraries somebody chose rather than the forty it installs. And the vulnerability data is still public rather than curated. The others: Snyk's vulnerability database is the product and it is genuinely better than the public feeds: earlier advisories, better metadata, fewer duplicates. GitHub's advisory database is also excellent and is what Dependabot runs on. We use public data and are honest that public data lags. Checkmarx One has its own SCA with a proprietary vulnerability feed and scans artifact registries too.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
Reachable packages Why these scores We answer it with three facts about the tree: direct or transitive, ships or development only, and whether anything imports it. On a real corpus that moved 278 of 361 dependency findings out of the way with a reason on each. It is a heuristic and it says so; where it cannot tell it says unknown and the finding keeps its place. The others: Snyk builds a call graph and can tell you the vulnerable function is reached, not merely the package. That is a stronger claim than ours and it is worth paying for if the dependency count is your main problem. Semgrep does the same for a growing list of ecosystems. Dependabot does not attempt it. Checkmarx One's exploitable path traces your code to the vulnerable function, but needs a SAST scan alongside and does not follow transitive dependencies.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
Malicious packages Why these scores The OpenSSF malicious packages feed arrives through OSV and is recognized, and beside it four signals that can only be answered from the checkout: an install hook that fetches and runs something, a dependency that is not from a registry, a floating version specifier, and a name one edit from a popular one. A malicious package is never recommended for downgrade, whatever the reachability says, because it runs at install time. The others: Snyk has real malicious package detection and a team behind it. Socket, which is not on this page, is better than all of us at this and does nothing else. GitHub relies on registry takedowns. We are competitive here and would not claim more than that. Checkmarx One has the strongest feed here, over four hundred thousand known malicious packages flagged in scans and in the editor, sold as an add on.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
SBOMs and license policy Why these scores CycloneDX and SPDX from syft, per repository and per branch, with license extraction and a policy that can deny or flag a license and fail a build on it. Every document carries a dependency graph, which is the part the tools these files exist for actually read: a component list with no graph loads into Dependency-Track as a project holding nothing. The files survive the scan that wrote them and are downloads on the Report files page, including from a run that was stopped part way. The others: Snyk does licensing well on the paid tiers. GitHub exports an SBOM per repository and does not do policy. Semgrep is not really in this space. This is a row we win partly because two of them charge extra for it. Checkmarx One exports CycloneDX and SPDX with license risk and policies.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	ahead
VEX documents Why these scores Every waiver and every not applicable verdict is already a VEX statement in all but format, so both dialects are written beside the SBOM on every report. An accepted risk is emitted as affected rather than not_affected, because saying otherwise would tell a customer something untrue in a format built to be trusted. Nothing the scanner merely guessed is signed: the reachability heuristic used to publish packages as not_affected under this installation's name and no longer says anything at all here, because it is a good way to sort a list and no way to tell somebody they are safe. The others: Snyk can produce VEX in some configurations. The other two do not. It is a small feature that answers a question in procurement, and it is starting to appear in contracts. Checkmarx One does it properly: VEX statements taken from its triage decisions, inside a CycloneDX SBOM.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	ahead
Infrastructure and containers	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Infrastructure as code Why these scores trivy over the configuration in the repository, with the CI workflows read as well, which most tools skip. Solid coverage of the common misconfigurations. The others: Snyk IaC has more rules, better remediation text and cloud context that we do not have at all. GitHub relies on third party actions for this. Ours is good enough to be useful and is not the best on the page. Checkmarx One uses KICS, its own open source IaC scanner with a large rule set and a query editor.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
Container images Why these scores The base image each Dockerfile names is resolved and read from its registry, with nothing built. That finds the four year old base image half an estate is pinned to, which is the common case. It does not scan images you have already built and pushed. The others: Snyk Container is a mature product: it scans built images, watches registries, and tells you which base image to move to and what it fixes. That last part is genuinely useful and we have nothing like it. Checkmarx One scans the images Dockerfiles name and images in private registries including ECR, ACR, GHCR and JFrog.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	behind
Making a large estate usable	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Exceptions that expire Why these scores Every way of setting a finding aside carries who decided, why, and when it lapses, and when it lapses the finding comes back. Exceptions can be scoped so they do not apply to a system carrying cardholder data. Nothing is ever deleted; the row and the reason stay. The others: All three have an ignore button. Snyk's carries a reason and an expiry and is the best of them. None of them lets an exception say "except where the system holds card data", and none keeps the record the way an auditor wants to read it. Checkmarx One has a proposed not exploitable state, custom states and a permission to approve them; we found no expiry. GitGuardian ignores an incident with one of three fixed reasons, and we found no expiry.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Changing what counts Why these scores The rules that decide whether something is an example rather than a credential are a page in the product, with a test box, a record of who changed what, and one button to restore the shipped set. Rules that ship can be turned off individually without editing anything. The same idea applied to the noise: the paths generated output lives in are a setting, a finding the engine itself grades low on both severity and confidence arrives as info, and a dependency finding in a package nothing imports is out of the default view. Sixty one per cent of one estate moved out of the work list that way, none of it deleted and every filter carrying a count and one click back. The others: Semgrep is strong here because writing rules is what it is for. Snyk and GitHub give you a policy toggle and a support ticket. This is one of the clearer wins on the page and it is the reason a real estate becomes readable. Checkmarx One lets you override or add queries in its own query language, per tenant, application or project. GitGuardian excludes paths per repository with a test box, excludes secret patterns, turns detectors off and takes custom detectors.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Your own severity rules Why these scores A rule or a CWE can be regraded across the estate, one finding can be regraded on its own, and the engine's original grade stays visible beside the new one. A rule can also ask about a combination rather than one thing: where it is, the repository, the kind, the state, how a credential was exposed, the masked value, or who committed the line, joined with all or with any. "A credential that only ever existed in git history and is still open is a medium" is then one rule with one reason on it, and the page says how many findings it covers before anybody saves it. Overrides can be told not to apply where the system carries a given label. A regrade on one finding records the code it was about, holds on every scan of the same code, and is lifted with a note when the flagged lines change, so nobody makes the same decision twice and nobody is held to one about code that is gone. The others: Snyk has severity overrides on paid tiers. GHAS effectively does not. None of the three lets a grade be written as a condition over the fields of a finding, and nobody else keeps the engine's grade beside yours, which is what makes the override auditable rather than just a change. Checkmarx One can set the severity of a query per tenant, application or project, which is per rule rather than a condition over a finding. GitGuardian has ordered severity rules over the detector, validity, its risk score and tags such as default branch or test file, and shows whether a person or a rule set the grade.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Signing off a branch Why these scores A reviewer reads a branch, writes what they read and what they concluded, and that is a record with an expiry against one branch of one repository. Any push at all turns it amber, because a reviewer read some code and different code has not been read. The branches nobody would ever review, which on a real estate is most of them, are signed off by a completed scan instead, marked as a machine's work and counted apart from the human kind. Coverage is then a share of branches somebody still owes rather than a count of reviews that only ever goes up. The others: GitHub has required reviews on a pull request, which is a different thing: it gates a merge and says nothing about the state of a branch afterwards. Snyk and Semgrep have no notion of a human sign off at all. This is a governance answer rather than a scanning one, and it is the row an auditor asks about. Checkmarx One has nothing like a branch sign off that we could find. GitGuardian has no idea of a reviewed branch.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Number to the rows behind it Why these scores The trends page opens from the estate to an organization, an organization to a repository, and a repository to its branches, and it is the same page each time with the chart, the risk matrix and the grid all narrowed together. Every column sorts and the table pages, both over the whole set rather than the rows on screen. Every figure on it is a link, and the list it opens holds exactly what the figure counted, which is checked by a test that follows the links and compares the numbers. The others: All three have dashboards and all three can filter. What none of them does is guarantee that the number you clicked and the list you landed on are the same number, and on a large estate that is where trust in a dashboard is won or lost. Checkmarx One has dashboards and analytics with filters down to results. GitGuardian's incident tables filter and sort, and its charts break down several ways and export.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Saying its grade is too high Why these scores Where the evidence on a finding already contradicts its grade, the page says so, proposes a lower one and explains in a sentence. Accepting it is one click and it is recorded against a person. It says nothing far more often than it says something, which is the point. The two halves behind that judgement are now drawn as a grid: what it would cost down one side, how likely anybody could do it across the other, coloured by what the pair means. That is the same matrix the grade comes out of, so the picture cannot disagree with the number, and it makes visible the thing a severity total hides, which is that a critical nothing imports and a medium somebody proved live are not the same problem. Where the evidence on the row is not enough, a model can be asked to read the code, which is the next row. The others: Nobody else does this. Every other product on the page is incentivised to report a higher number rather than a lower one, and it shows. Checkmarx One suppresses likely false positives with AI but does not propose a lower grade. GitGuardian puts a model's risk score beside the rule's severity, where the two can disagree, but does not propose a lower grade.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
How much work there really is Why these scores A distribution ships one source package as many binary ones, and one flaw in it is reported once against each. Eight binaries times seven advisories is fifty six rows and one apt upgrade. So the list counts the upgrade rather than the advisory: one row per package, per version, per branch, per repository, with every advisory it closes on it and the worst of them setting its grade. On a real estate that is eighteen percent fewer rows before the source package is even known, and the unknown severity pile falls by ninety six percent, which says it was mostly many advisories against very few packages. Both numbers are always on the screen together, because how much work is there and are we affected by this advisory are different questions that both get asked, and an auditor will not accept a group as an answer to the second. The others: Every product on this page counts advisories, and each of them has a good reason to: an advisory is what the feed publishes and what a customer asks about. Snyk and GitHub both group by package inside a project view, which helps, and neither leads with the count of things to do or shows you both numbers side by side. The result is that the headline figure everywhere else is the size of the list rather than the size of the job. Checkmarx One groups many SAST results into one best fix location and suggests SCA upgrades. GitGuardian folds every occurrence of one secret into one incident and groups similar incidents for remediation.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Baselining the backlog Why these scores A baseline per organization, so the work list is what arrived after a date and the backlog is still one click away rather than deleted. The others: GitHub does this well with pull request scanning: only what the change introduced blocks the merge. Semgrep's diff aware scanning is the same idea and is very good. Level, and all four approaches are reasonable. Checkmarx One scans pull requests, marks new and recurring results, and can break a build on policy. GitGuardian's command line can ignore secrets already known, and the dashboard separates history from new pushes.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Is this version anywhere Why these scores A finding exists because somebody published an advisory. A component exists because it is in the tree. When a release is announced as compromised on a Tuesday there is no advisory until Thursday, and for those two days the only useful question is the one a table built from advisories cannot answer. So the inventory is built from the bill of materials rather than from the findings, and advisories are joined on afterwards. Search by name or by package URL, get every repository and every branch holding it, and export exactly what you searched for as CSV, JSON or a CycloneDX document. The branch is the part that is genuinely unusual: a release branch routinely pins a version the default branch has already moved past, so "we upgraded that" is only ever true of a branch somebody checked. The others: Snyk is good here and this is not a row it loses badly. It lists dependencies across projects, searches by package and reports licenses, and it is hosted, so nobody has to run a scan to keep it current. GitHub has the dependency graph and dependency review, and on the enterprise tiers an organization wide view of it. Semgrep Supply Chain lists what each project depends on. What none of them does is treat a branch as a place of its own or hand you the search back as a signed off bill of materials, and those are the two reasons this row goes our way rather than any claim that the others cannot answer the question at all. Checkmarx One lists packages per project and has an application inventory in its posture views.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	no coverage	ahead
Who can reach the repository Why these scores Every finding shows what the repository holds, who owns it, whether the default branch is protected and who can push to it, with outside collaborators counted separately. The same credential in a payment system and a brochure site are not the same problem and nothing else on this page tells you which one you are looking at. The others: This is application security posture territory, which Snyk sells as a separate product. GitHub has the access data and does not put it next to the finding. It is unusual to have this in a scanner and it is one of the reasons this one is worth running. Checkmarx One has posture views, and we found no repository access data beside a finding. GitGuardian says whether a source is public and how critical somebody marked it, and for some keys what the key can reach, but not who can push to the repository.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Fitting into how you work	Git Code Review	Checkmarx One	GitHub Advanced Security	Snyk	Semgrep	GitGuardian	Verdict
Repository support Why these scores GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gitea, Forgejo, Azure Repos, AWS CodeCommit, Google Cloud Source Repositories, Assembla, Beanstalk, and Subversion and Perforce at their current revision. An estate that grew by acquisition is usually on three of these. Gitea and Forgejo are the two usual answers to "we host our own git": one token reaches the whole instance, and links are written the way those hosts serve them rather than in GitHub's shape, which is a 404 there. The others: GHAS is GitHub only, by design, and scores zero here for that reason rather than as criticism. Snyk and Semgrep both cover the big three well. Neither connects to Gitea or Forgejo, and neither covers Subversion or Perforce, so if you self host your git or still have either of those, most of this market simply does not see them. Checkmarx One integrates with GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps, cloud and self hosted. GitGuardian reads GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps and Gerrit, cloud and self hosted, plus many sources that are not code hosts.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Blocking a secret at push counts five times Why these scores We cannot, so no stars. The tool only ever reads your host, so nothing here can refuse a push. The documentation has a pre commit hook a developer can copy into their own repository, which refuses a commit carrying a secret on their own machine, but only if they installed it, and they can skip it. That is not blocking a push. A secret that is pushed is in the history from that moment, and every row about finding it afterwards is about cleaning up something this would have prevented. The others: This is the capability GitHub Advanced Security is best at and nobody else on this page matches. Push protection refuses a push carrying a recognized secret on GitHub itself, before it reaches the repository, and a developer who needs to override it has to say why on the record. Checkmarx One has a pre receive hook that does the same, but only on GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket installations you run yourself, not on GitHub.com, plus a pre commit hook. Semgrep can run in a pre commit hook, which like ours is not blocking a push, and we found nothing that refuses a push at the host. Snyk does not scan for secrets, so there is nothing for it to refuse. GitGuardian has the same shape as Checkmarx One: pre commit and pre push hooks on the developer's machine, and a pre receive hook on GitHub Enterprise Server, GitLab and Bitbucket installations you run yourself, not on GitHub.com.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
Blocking a risky merge counts three times Why these scores We cannot, so no stars. There is a review command that fails on what a change added, and you can make it a required status check that holds a merge, but you build that yourself in your own CI and the product never touches the pull request. That ability is scored on the Failing a build row rather than counted twice here. Nothing here holds a pull request on its own. What we do have is the other side of it: every finding says whether its default branch is protected and who can push to it. Blocking at merge and at push is the next item on the roadmap. The others: Everyone else does this, and GitHub does it best: code scanning can be made a rule on a branch, so a pull request that introduces an alert above a severity you choose cannot merge, with nothing to build. Checkmarx One blocks pull requests on its break build policies. Semgrep blocks on the findings you mark as blocking, from CI. Snyk fails a pull request check that branch protection can be told to require, for dependencies and code. GitGuardian's check can hold a merge on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise Server when branch protection requires it; we found nothing equivalent for GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
Code stays on your network Why these scores It runs on your server and writes to your database. Nothing is uploaded, and it goes further than that: the working files that hold the cleartext of a found credential are put in shared memory rather than on a disk, so on a machine with room for it the plaintext of your leaked keys never touches storage at all. Where there is not enough shared memory the scan says so in the log rather than doing it quietly, and overwrites those files rather than merely unlinking them. The clone itself is a temporary directory that is deleted when the run ends. For a regulated environment, or one where sending source to a third party needs a committee, that is the difference between running it and not. The editor plugin holds the same line: the file being edited goes to your installation and nowhere else, and is deleted once it has been read. The one exception is one you choose: AI validation is off until an administrator turns it on, and then sends findings, and the code around them if that box is ticked, to the model provider they picked, which can be one you host. The others: Snyk Code can run locally in some configurations but the platform is SaaS. GHAS runs inside GitHub, which is fine if GitHub already holds the code. Semgrep can run entirely in CI with only findings uploaded, which is a reasonable middle. Checkmarx One is SaaS, including single tenant and private hosting that Checkmarx runs; only its older CxSAST product installs on premises. Ours is the only one where the answer is simply "nothing leaves". GitGuardian has a self hosted edition that runs the whole platform on your own Kubernetes, on its top plan, and needs a way out to its installer service unless sales arranges otherwise.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Read only Why these scores Every call to your host is a GET. It is a tested property, not a promise. No fix branches, no pull requests, no comments, no bot in your history. Several security teams will approve a read only tool and not a writing one, and that is the whole reason this is a row. The others: The others write, and mostly you want them to, which is the next row. It is worth knowing which mode you are in. Checkmarx One writes pull request comments, SCA remediation and AI fixes. GitGuardian only reads, apart from check results and pull request comments, and an optional app that opens pull requests to plant honeytokens.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Fixing it for you Why these scores We do not, deliberately, and it costs us this row honestly. A fix pull request needs write access, and giving it up would end the row above. If you want the tool to raise the upgrade for you, we are the wrong tool. The others: Dependabot is the best of these and is free on GitHub: it opens the upgrade, runs your tests and keeps at it. Snyk fix pull requests are good. Semgrep autofix is good for the rule classes it covers. This is a real capability gap and the trade is deliberate rather than an oversight. Checkmarx One fixes with AI in the editor and remediates dependencies and IaC automatically. GitGuardian changes no code, but can revoke a key from the incident for about forty providers.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
Failing a build Why these scores A command that exits non zero on what you choose, SARIF out for a Security tab, and the same review in a pre commit hook, where it needs no server and no token at all because it runs where the code already is. Everything you need to wire it up yourself. The others: Snyk and Semgrep both ship polished CI integrations, curated policies and pull request comments out of the box. Ours is a CLI and a schema. It works, and it is more assembly. Checkmarx One has a CLI and CI plugins with thresholds and break build policies. GitGuardian's command line is MIT licensed, fails a build, and has documented setups for eight CI systems.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
In the editor Why these scores Visual Studio Code and Cursor install the same package, and the JetBrains IDEs and Eclipse run the language server underneath it. Open or save a file and it is read by the same engines and graded by the same triage the nightly scan uses, so the editor and the report agree with each other. Only lines that differ from HEAD carry a finding, because a plugin that opens showing two thousand of somebody else's findings is uninstalled that afternoon. The file goes to your own server and is deleted once it has been read; nothing is stored and no finding is created. Not a five: it is on no marketplace, so an editor will not update it for you, JetBrains and Eclipse need a generic language server client first, and there is no autofix. The others: Snyk's extensions are mature, are on the marketplaces, and suggest fixes in place, which is a real capability we do not have and a big part of why developers tolerate the tool. GitHub has Copilot Autofix and code scanning in the editor, on GitHub. Semgrep has a good VS Code extension and an IntelliJ one. The difference worth knowing is where the file you are editing goes: with the commercial products it goes to the vendor, and with this one it goes to the server you are already running, which for some organizations is the difference between a plugin they can approve and one they cannot. Checkmarx One has plugins for VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio and Eclipse, used in Cursor too, with real time SCA, IaC and secrets and an AI assistant. GitGuardian has a VS Code extension, which Cursor uses too, and hooks for AI coding agents; we found no JetBrains plugin.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Telling somebody Why these scores Slack, Teams, mail by SMTP or Microsoft Graph, and a plain webhook. New findings only, with verified credentials and exploited vulnerabilities going out on their own. The others: All three have this and Snyk additionally files the ticket: Jira integration that opens and closes the issue. That last part is what turns a notification into somebody's work, and we do not have it. Checkmarx One sends to Jira and similar trackers, GitHub Issues and webhooks. GitGuardian notifies Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, Splunk, ServiceNow and webhooks, and its Jira integration opens issues and resolves incidents when they close.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind
The record of who did what Why these scores Every decision is an audit event with the person, the target and the reasoning, searchable as you type, and each event opens to show the whole detail. Settings changes name which setting moved. An administrator can look at the product as another user, read only, with both ends of it logged. The others: All three log administrative actions to some degree, and on the enterprise tiers you can export it. None of them is built around the idea that the record of the decision is as important as the finding. Checkmarx One keeps triage history per result, with permissions for each state. GitGuardian keeps a workspace audit log for its owners and managers, a year on its top plan.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	ahead
Reporting to management Why these scores There is a trends page filtered by connection, organization, repository, branch and period, with the boxes narrowing each other so choosing a connection does not then offer every branch in the estate. A risk matrix plots impact against likelihood, which the product already asks separately, so a critical in a package nothing imports and a medium somebody proved live sit in different cells rather than in one total. A heatmap says where the work is, and every figure on it opens the exact rows behind it. From any filter it writes a PDF: an executive summary built from what was found rather than from totals, what to do in priority order with the specific packages and repositories named, sections per severity grouped by the weakness they are examples of, and the matrix and heatmap again. History goes back as far as the scanning does, because whether a finding was open on a given day is already in the database. The others: Snyk still wins this and by a real margin. It answers how long a critical has sat open, which team owns it and whether that team is getting better, and it will mail the report on a schedule. None of those are here: there is no time to fix measure, no owner attribution and nothing scheduled. What is here is the document somebody takes into a meeting, which is what this row was two for not having at all. Checkmarx One has analytics with risk trends and SLA visibility. GitGuardian has an analytics overview for management, with median time to remediate critical incidents.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	level
Very large estates Why these scores One server, scans that can run alongside each other up to a limit you set, and a scheduler. What a scan may take from the machine is now a page of settings rather than numbers compiled in: repositories at once, scans at once, and what each engine may use inside one repository, with the Go engines given a share of the cores rather than helping themselves to all of them. A deadline takes down the whole process tree rather than the shell in front of it. A repository stopped at its limit keeps the passes that finished and is reported as partial rather than vanishing, and a history too large for one run is walked across several until it ends. It handles a few hundred repositories comfortably. It is still one box and it is still not clustered, which is why this row does not go further. The others: All three are built to run across thousands of repositories with somebody else worrying about capacity. If your estate is that size, that is a real difference and not a detail. Checkmarx One is a multi tenant SaaS built for large estates. GitGuardian is built for enterprise estates, with a connector for private hosts.	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	★★★★★	behind

Two products we do not really compete with

OpenText Fortify and Veracode come up in every application security conversation, so here is why they are not columns in the table above.

What they are for

Both are built around deep static analysis that follows data through a whole program, across a very long list of languages, older ones included, and Veracode reads compiled binaries without the source at all. Both are bought by a central security or compliance team that needs a named vendor's report an auditor will accept. On following a value across files, and on the depth of their rules, either one is well ahead of us.

What they are not built for

The rows this product is strongest on. Fortify finds a hardcoded key the way it finds any other flaw, in the current files, with no walk through history and no asking the provider whether it still works. Veracode added secrets scanning with your own patterns and says nothing about history or validation. Neither puts who can reach a repository beside a finding, keeps a VEX document, or signs off a branch.

Where they each stand out

Fortify is the one commercial product here that you can still install entirely on your own servers, as you can this one, which matters to the same regulated buyers; its dependency analysis and its Aviator AI are OpenText cloud services, though. Veracode bought Phylum and now flags malicious packages and blocks them on download, and its Veracode Fix opens the fix pull request for you.

So which one

If the question is deep analysis of a large Java, .NET or legacy codebase, with a report for an auditor, buy Fortify or Veracode. If the question is what has leaked, what is vulnerable and what matters across every repository and every branch you own, the products in the table are the comparison, and that is where this one competes.

Where we would tell you to buy something else

If you need somebody to call

Buy any of the four. This is a project on a server and there is no number to ring.

If interprocedural analysis is the point

CodeQL, Snyk Code, Semgrep Pro and Checkmarx One all follow a value across files and functions, and so do Fortify and Veracode. Free semgrep stops at the file boundary and no tuning changes that.

If you want the fix raised for you

Dependabot is free and very good at this. We will never do it, because it needs write access to your repositories.

If a secret must never reach the repository

GitHub push protection refuses the push, and code scanning as a required branch rule holds the merge. Nothing here can block anything: we report, and the hooks to enforce it are yours to wire up.

If somebody needs how long a critical has sat open

Snyk measures time to fix and attributes it to a team, and it will mail the answer on a schedule. There is a trends page and a PDF here now, and none of those three things.

If your estate is thousands of repositories

All four are built for it with somebody else running the capacity. This is one server.

If everything is on GitHub anyway

GHAS is one switch, the secret scanning is excellent and partner alerting tells the issuer directly. Price is the catch.

What it does do Try it for nothing

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