If you’re here, chances are you’ll know all about the AppSec market, so we’ll get to the point; Snyk became a major player in the application security market around a decade ago by focusing on developers. In that time, it’s built up a steady userbase. But like any tech company that scales, it has come across many challenges that are impacting its users - from complicated UIs, integration and onboarding to add-ons that some users believe should be included in their upfront investment in the product. Other AppSec companies have since come about that offer better alternatives without the same issues, and that’s why many people (you included) are looking for a Snyk alternative that you can either migrate to, or select from the outset to save you from having to overcome any issues.
We’ll go through five types of alternatives that falling into one of these categories:
- All-in-one security platforms
- Source code management platform security offerings
- Open source security
- Incumbent security providers
- Code quality-first platforms
What problems does Snyk solve?
Snyk was founded at a time when security was shifting left. That meant that while AppSec engineers would still have the core responsibility for security in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), there would be more onus on developers to consider security as early as possible in the development stage. This would help engineering teams to detect and fix issues earlier in the cycle.
Unlike many traditional AppSec companies that came before it, Snyk connected to the DevOps pipeline to scan and fix issues across a number of different areas such as proprietary code repositories, open-source dependencies (SCA), third-party libraries, packages, containers and cloud infrastructures. It now comes equipped with Static Code Analysis (SAST), an AI autofix feature for SAST, and Infrastructure as Code scanning.
Snyk’s focus on being developer-first resonated with users, many of which were growing frustrated with security-first platforms such as Checkmarx, Veracode and Mend; its popularity soared as a result. To this day, it still provides reasonable coverage of security in application security posture management (ASPM), but has been slower to innovate compared to newer players. Despite this, it still offers some features that other alternatives do not such as SOAP-based web services scanning for vulnerabilities such as XML injections, insecure deserialization and misconfigurations.
What are the challenges with Snyk?
While Snyk was built with developers in mind, the company opted to expand its reach to enterprises. This has detracted from the company’s original goal and has resulted in numerous technical challenges.
As the company shifted to attract enterprises, its product has quickly become complicated, with acquired products bolted on to cover the SDLC, and new modules added which some of its users feel are disconnected from their core use cases. Moreover, these modules have overlapping features, with only a subset of the features seen as being really needed. However, to get full coverage, Snyk users are being asked to invest heavily in these additional modules as add-ons.
But even then, full coverage for Snyk does not include everything that an organization would expect of a comprehensive security tool today. For instance, the company lacks cloud posture management (CSPM), an in-app firewall, open-source licence PR gating, and an on-premise scanner. The lack of on-premise coverage, for instance, can be a big drawback for some organizations’ compliance requirements.
Some key features such as container image scanning, SBOM generation, team-based access rights, custom user roles and reporting are reserved for the highest tier enterprise plans. Meanwhile, its secrets detection is only available in the IDE. Despite these restrictions, Snyk’s product is presented as a bundle of separate tools, meaning multiple setups and UIs to learn about (The last thing developers need is to add to their cognitive load right now, but here we are). The goal for Snyk is to reach a broader stakeholder base, but the lack of user-friendliness can work against getting the right buy-in.
Here are some more specific examples of Snyk’s technical disadvantages:
- Snyk has a tendency to overwhelm developers with noise; more vulnerabilities flagged are not necessarily a good thing - particularly when they turn out to be false positives or low-priority. Snyk's SAST exhibits a high incidence of false positives in certain languages. It does not have the ability to reduce noise by intelligently filtering out non-exploitable findings.
- Snyk lacks language and framework coverage.
- Snyk’s Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) only provides an abstracted view of what’s going on overall compared to other more comprehensive tools. As a result, many Snyk users are reliant on a separate DAST solution in parallel.
- Snyk’s integrations, such as with Jira, are clunky - often not syncing with all the resources that it should, hard to set up, and difficult to work with if you have multiple teams (particularly without manual intervention).
- Snyk has inconvenient workflows for developers. For instance, you need to create a Jira request for every issue instead of being able to proactively resolve it.
As with many dev tools, teams are often reluctant to switch away from Snyk because they believe it may entail the time and effort of going back to the market and evaluating and implementing. However, this does come at its own cost.
There is a convergence of many existing tools that organizations may be using (SCA, SAST, DAST, etc) under single modern platforms. These platforms provide more comprehensive coverage than what users are currently using - going beyond the convergence of capabilities.
That combined means there is a business case for switching; the ability to identify and fix issues at an earlier stage across more surfaces, at a lower cost than their existing plan, with a tool that is easier to adopt for developers means a far more significant ROI.
Top Snyk Alternatives
1. All-in-one security platforms
Aikido Security
Aikido Security secures everything end-to-end in one platform for code, cloud and runtime. It offers all of the core capabilities offered by Snyk, as well as the addition of cloud posture management (CSPM), an in-app firewall, open-source licence PR gating, and an on-premise scanner as well as secrets detection (in and out of the IDE). Additional features that are enterprise-tier only for Snyk are included with Aikido from the outset.
Snyk offers four core products compared to Aikido’s 11 products. But Aikido’s offers these in one security suite, providing a cleaner UI, meaning developers don’t have to juggle between different interfaces that each have their own learning curve.
While Snyk offers SAST, IaC, Software Composition Analysis, and vulnerability scanning, Aikido offers more functions and features within its all-in-one platform including SAST, DAST, Software Composition Analysis, IaC, container image scanning, secret scanning, malware scanning, API scanning, license risk scanning, local custom scanning, as well as cloud (CSPM) security.
In terms of technical differences when comparing Snyk with Aikido:
- Aikido has 85% fewer false positives than Snyk
Independent research from Latio Pulse’s Cloud & Application Security Expert James Berthoty compared SCA functionality and found that Aikido does more advanced reachability analysis and has a better true positive percentage. - Aikido has a cleaner UI than Snyk, meaning fewer support requests, faster time to resolve issues, and generally, happier developers.
For example, Berthoty said the UI was more intuitive for developers who were looking at what packages needed an upgrade. - Aikido uses more logical workflows than Snyk.
Berthoty explained that Aikido combines the findings into a single ticket to upgrade a dependency, which is a more understandable workflow than Snyk.
Aikido does not offer SOAP API scanning or SIEM integration, which may be more relevant for larger enterprises. The only features it covers under the enterprise tier are custom dashboards (not available on Snyk at all) and the ability to deploy security solutions within private data centers (which Snyk also puts into its enterprise-only tier).
Unlike Snyk, Aikido offers transparent pricing; so you’ll know what you’ll be paying from the get go. Snyk requires more budget upfront, and then charges for add-ons such as CI/CD (which would already be included with Aikido) and (unnecessary) recursive scans on open source packages.
Further reading:
Compare: Snyk vs Aikido Security
Read: Aikido vs Snyk G2 reviews
Tired of managing too many tools and false positives?
So were 25k+ orgs.
2. Source code management security platforms
GitHub Advanced Security
GitHub Advanced Security is a great starting point for existing GitHub users that want to enhance their security posture, particularly around code security and dependency vulnerability. It covers SAST and SCA specifically. Advanced Security consists of two additional add-ons on top of the GitHub licence, extending the platform to find vulnerabilities in the code and supply chain without requiring a separate server or interface.
The key advantage of using Advanced Security is that it integrates natively with repositories on GitHub with no additional setup for CI/CD integration. However, this also means it doesn’t scan code outside of GitHub, and offers little visibility into anything outside of GitHub’s bandwidth, including containers, infrastructure, or runtime behaviour.
Despite this, GitHub Advanced Security provides a good baseline of real-time feedback during development, code scanning, secrets scanning and dependency reviews. It scans both first-party and third-party code, and as it is managed by GitHub, there is a reduction in operational overhead. It’s also easier for developers to adopt than alternatives.
GitHub Advanced Security is complementary to Dependabot, a free dependency management tool that natively integrates with GitHub repositories, automates pull requests and patches with minimal configuration. As it’s fully automated, it means less manual work compared to Snyk’s more interactive approach.
Although it is a great starting point for teams building fully on GitHub, there are numerous security gaps that GitHub Advanced Security does not cover: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning, surface monitoring (DAST), API security, in-app firewall, cloud posture management (CSPM), malware detection in dependencies, and more. Therefore, it could be resource-intensive in the long run to use GitHub Advanced Security alongside another tool (or tools) to fill the gaps.
Even the existing features it has are not extensive; its dependency vulnerability review would require supplementation with SBOM/SCA tools, and its secrets detection would need to be supplemented for custom secrets, for instance. Ultimately, GitHub Advanced Security does not compare favourably to other Snyk alternatives in terms of breadth of coverage.
GitLab Ultimate
GitLab Ultimate is GitLab’s highest tier licence, with built-in security testing tools covering SAST, SCA, secrets detection, security dashboards and management, integration and automation. Just like GitHub Advanced Security, GitLab’s security tools are a great starting point for those organizations that use GitLab for source code management and CI/CD. However, GitLab offers more extensive coverage than GitHub’s offering, with licence compliance, DAST and API security. It also has features that many other developer security software providers do not have such as code quality analysis and fuzz testing, which it says increases chances to get results by using arbitrary payloads instead of well-known ones.
GitLab provides templates for various scans, which can be viewed in security dashboards. Users can view vulnerabilities across projects, track fixes and enforce security approvals, while results can be exported or integrated via API.
Despite these features, GitLab still doesn’t cover as much (security) ground as other companies, meaning organizations will have to plug the gaps with other tooling that covers Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning, an in-app firewall, automated Swagger creation, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), malware detection in dependencies, reachability analysis, and more.
GitLab Ultimate’s main advantage is that security capabilities are natively integrated into an organization’s development lifecycle. This is great for teams building with GitLab that want to hit a baseline for security and gain adoption fast. However, its breadth of coverage is still somewhat limited for organizations that are truly looking to improve their security posture.
3. Open source security offerings
Semgrep
Semgrep maintains a popular open source community edition of its commercial static analysis tool (SAST). The community version is popular for developers that are keen on adopting an open source tool to analyse code to unearth bugs and security issues, including SQL injection, XSS, hardcoded secrets, etc, as well as enforcing coding standards. The idea is for the tool to feel like “grep” for code, enabling users to write rules that look like code rather than more complicated regex or AST patterns.
Its strengths are that it supports a large number of programming languages (30+), and can run throughout different stages of your SDLC (in your IDE, as a pre-commit hook, or in CI/CD pipelines). This, along with the fact that its open source, means flexibility; users can select from templated rules or write custom rules to fit a team’s codebase’s needs.
Although it has flexibility, it is lightweight; meaning it analyzes code on a single-file or function basis, lacking deep interprocedural analysis. This means it often misses issues that are present across multiple files or components. That is particularly true of its free Semgrep Community Edition (dedicated open source developers may be reluctant to opt for the paid platform to spot vulnerabilities in cross-file data flows). Its open source version lacks native SCA functionality, SBOM generation, license risk reviews, native inline PR comments, post-merge audits, and policy enforcement.
This points to a larger issue at play; Semgrep has slowly been rolling back its open-source engine, with changes such as locking community-contributed rules under a restrictive license and migrating critical features such as ignores, LOC, fingerprints and other metavariables away from the open project. It’s for this reason that 10 competing security software providers have launched Opengrep (see below).
In addition, both the commercial and community editions of Semgrep focus mainly on source code. They don't natively cover other security needs like cloud posture checks, dynamic testing (DAST), infrastructure-as-code scanning, malware detection, or container image scanning. Therefore, security teams need to factor in that other supplementary tools will be required (coming at additional cost and adding to cognitive load as developers will have to use multiple tools, which don’t necessarily integrate well together).
Opengrep
As a result of Semgrep’s steer away from its open-source commitment by removing critical features of the scanning engine and placing them behind a commercial license, ten security companies (Aikido Security, Amplify, Arnica, Endor Labs, Jit, Kodem, Legit, Mobb and Orca Security) teamed up earlier this year to launch Opengrep, a fork of SemgrepCS.
Driven by the need to ensure community trust in open-source projects, Opengrep is on a mission to build the most advanced static analysis engine fully open source. The ten companies are investing in a long-term roadmap that aims to provide useful new features to commoditize and advance SAST. The aim for Opengrep is to not hide essential metadata and new scanning capabilities behind a login, provide backwards compatibility, and unlock previously pro-only capabilities such as inter-procedural analysis and cross-file analysis.
Opengrep is an alternative to Snyk’s SAST capabilities with the benefits of being lightweight and open source. However, it does not have the same coverage across other software security areas (DAST, malware dertection, more) that other Snyk alternatives have.
4. Incumbent security companies
Checkmarx One
Checkmarx One is catered towards enterprises that are looking for application security. It covers open source dependency scanning (SCA), SAST, IaC scanning, secret leakage detection, surface monitoring (DAST), SBOM generation, API security, container security, malware detection, IDE and CI/CD integrations. While both products cover similar ground, Checkmarx built its platform internally whereas Snyk has acquired solutions that have been difficult to integrate into its core offering.
Checkmarx claims to produce less ‘noise’ than Snyk, provides better reporting capabilities for enterprises and its Exploitable Path supports major repos and popular languages which goes beyond Snyk’s restrictive Reachable Vulnerabilities that only works with GitHub repos and Java projects. This makes it harder to prioritize tasks. It also provides SIEM integration for centralized security.
On the flipside, Snyk provides AI-powered autofix whereas Checkmarx has limited real-time scanning in the IDE. Snyk also offers its own proprietary AI engine rather than relying on ChatGPT for code remediations like Checkmarx.
Like Snyk, Checkmarx can require significant investment in comparison to other tools. The two companies, however, don’t cover other areas that alternative companies do such as Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), an in-app firewall and compliance reports. Checkmarx does not offer free trials or a monthly subscription. Like other incumbent AppSec vendors, Checkmarx is often chosen by security personnel because it is known as one of the first AppSec vendors of its ilk. However, organizations should compare Checkmarx to more modern alternatives on the market.
Veracode
Veracode is an AppSec product that covers SCA, SAST, IaC scanning, secrets detection, DAST, container image scanning, SBOM generation and reporting. It also provides SOAP API scanning. Compared to Snyk, Veracode offers more IDE integrations, supports more languages and frameworks, and has more extensive reporting and dashboard capabilities.
Snyk however, offers faster scanning capabilities and more container coverage. Snyk also offers its own proprietary AI engine rather than relying on ChatGPT for code remediations like Veracode, meaning a higher likelihood of hallucinations. Snyk also offers end-of-life runtimes, on-premise code scanning (for the enterprise tier), agent-based virtual machine scanning, asset inventory management, and cloud misconfiguration checks, all of which Veracode does not.
However, Veracode does provide SIEM integration, which may be relevant for enterprises. This is a feature that most modern security providers do not offer.
As an incumbent it also does not provide features that other Snyk alternatives like Aikido Security provides, such as malware detection and cloud security posture management (CSPM). Like Checkmarx, Veracode also comes at a significant upfront cost compared to other tools.
5. Code quality-first products
SonarQube
SonarQube is the most well-known company for code quality; in fact, it was the first company to provide a dedicated solution that checks how clean the code is, using numerous code quality metrics.
Since its inception, SonarQube has slowly added additional features and functionality that extend beyond code quality, with capabilities in SAST (including custom SAST rules), Infrastructure-as-Code scanning, secrets detection and on-premise code scanning. This gives it coverage against the likes of Snyk and Aikido Security, combining code quality checks with security scanning. However, unlike these companies, it does not cover open source dependency scanning (SCA), DAST, API security, license management, end-of-life runtimes, and AI autofix capabilities. It also does not offer cloud security, malware detection or an in-app firewall.
But perhaps more importantly, SonarQube is a code quality-first solution, compared to the security-first approach of Aikido Security, Snyk, Veracode and Checkmarx. SonarQube therefore currently complements these tools rather than competing directly against them. For companies that do not want the full breadth of security coverage provided by Snyk alternatives but want a focus on improving their code quality, SonarQube is a good alternative.
Conclusion
Snyk is a powerful tool, but these alternatives may offer better solutions depending on your specific needs. Aikido provides superior value for money with an all-in-one platform, open source alternatives Semgrep and Opengrep are great for flexibility albeit with limited coverage, GitHub Advanced Security and GitLab Ultimate are ideal as a starting point for users of those specific code source management platforms, and SonarQube is the top choice for companies that want to focus more on code quality than overall security posture. Ultimately, the best tool for your organization will depend on your existing workflows, the complexity of your infrastructure, and the specific challenges you’re trying to solve.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which Snyk alternative offers full AppSec coverage (SAST, SCA, IaC, containers)?
Aikido Security offers 11 scanners in one encompassing SAST, SCA, IaC and DAST. It goes beyond other AppSec alternatives as it extends into CSPM and features an in-app firewall.
Does GitHub Advanced Security work with other source code management tools?
No, GitHub Advanced Security is for existing GitHub users only.
Is there a cheaper or open source alternative to Snyk for small teams?
Aikido Security offers transparent pricing on its website to give you a like-for-like comparison with alternatives like Snyk. It comes at a fraction of the cost of alternatives. For open source, Opengrep covers SAST capabilities.
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