Top 5 Snyk Alternatives in 2024

While Snyk has achieved success in the code security domain, it does have some notable flaws. We know this from our interactions with customers looking to switch from Snyk products to more robust and comprehensive application security tools.

If you’re a Snyk user or part of a team seeking a more robust solution for code quality and security management, here’s our list of the top five Snyk alternatives for 2024.

What Snyk Does 

When exploring Snyk alternatives, consider your team’s specific needs and ensure the solution you choose meets them. To help you make the right decision, we’ll cover the features of each tool, along with its strengths and weaknesses.

Snyk is a developer security platform that offers these key features:

1. Comprehensive Security Coverage: As a platform, Snyk excels in offering a fairly complete and far-reaching set of code security analysis tools. 

• Snyk Code secures your code as it’s been created
• Snyk Open Source helps you avoid open-source vulnerabilities
• Snyk Container helps in identifying and fixing vulnerabilities in container images
• Snyk Infrastructure as Code helps resolve cloud misconfigurations 

2. Expansive toolset: Snyk offers dozens of integrations for popular IDEs, Git providers, CI/CD tools, cloud platforms, and notification & ticketing systems. It adopts the shift-left approach to security, providing IDE plugins that scan for vulnerabilities as you code. This real-time feedback helps reduce technical debt in software.
   
   
3. Dedicated vulnerability database: Snyk’s vulnerability database contains a registry of open-source vulnerabilities and cloud misconfigurations. The database is maintained by Snyk’s dedicated research team using industry-leading security intelligence.
   
   
4. CI/CD pipeline security: Snyk’s CI/CD integrations provide constant security monitoring and threat coverage throughout the pipeline. This helps keep code secure throughout the software development lifecycle (SLDC). Snyk also integrates with popular CI/CD tools like CircleCI, Jenkins, and Bitbucket pipelines.

Beyond these, Snyk offers multi-language support, rich APIs for third-party integration, custom user roles, Snyk AppRisk (for ASPM), and AI coding tools for increased developer productivity. 

Here are some things to keep in mind when accessing Snyk alternatives:

• Performance: Consider how long the coding analysis tool takes to complete a full vulnerability scan, including on large codebases. Quicker analysis times will positively impact build times, CI/CD performance, and the overall developer experience.
  
  

• Customization and flexibility: Applications differ in nature and complexity. Always go for tools that offer effortless customization options, allowing you to tailor security controls to your project requirements. 
  
  
• Integration ecosystem: Tool adoption among team members is smoother if the tool integrates seamlessly with the existing development stack (version control, IDEs, CI/CD pipelines, etc.), so be sure to check out how well each Snyk alternative integrates with other tools before committing.
  
  
• Comprehensive product documentation and resource center: Good documentation helps you understand product features and how to get the most out of them. A rich documentation/resource center should be a prerequisite for adopting any application security tool as Snyk’s replacement.

What Snyk Misses

Why might you look for a Snyk alternative? Here are some of the most common shortcomings and limitations associated with Snyk:

• Erroneous reporting: Snyk generates a lot of false positives, erroneously flagging benign code as problematic. Conversely, it generates many false negatives; we’ve seen numerous reports of Snyk being unreliable at reporting vulnerabilities in certain development stacks.
  
  
• Subpar user interface: Some engineers have complained about Snyk’s not-so-user-friendly user interface, especially its lack of responsiveness.
  
  
• Unreliable SAST tool: Snyk is no doubt a good software composition analysis (SCA) tool, but its SAST product is relatively new and underwhelming (especially when compared to that of its competitors)

As you search for a Snyk alternative, think about all the features Snyk currently offers and ask yourself if replacing Snyk with any of these alternatives will improve your team's developer experience.

Here are some Snyk alternatives to have a look at: 

Codacy

Codacy tops the list of Snyk alternatives. It’s a developer-friendly alternative to Snyk, providing software engineering teams with accessible tools for measuring, managing, and improving code quality and code security as part of their development process.

Key Features:

1. Integrated feature set: Codacy provides a 360-degree view of application security risks, offering an extensive set of quality and security tools to ensure you achieve the highest standards of security in your workflow. While Snyk focuses on security, Codacy provides a more comprehensive toolbox with quality, security, coverage, and analytics features.
   
   
2. Developer-friendly experience: Codacy was designed with developers in mind. It offers integrations for popular Git providers like GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket, as well as tools like SemGrep, Trivy, and SonarC#. Furthermore, it provides a CLI tool for local scans, IDE plugins for real-time feedback during development, and intuitive user dashboards.
   
   
3. Security-focused approach: Codacy analyzes your code from the inside with SAST, SCA, hard-coded secret detection, and infrastructure-as-code configs (IaC). It safeguards your code from the outside with DAST and penetration testing. This wide coverage helps to eliminate risk from all angles.
   
   
4. AI-assisted code fixes: Codacy’s Quality AI offers suggested fixes directly within your Git provider. This automated software correction feature streamlines the software development process, enhancing your team’s developer productivity.
   
   
5. Flexible deployment options: Codacy offers cloud-based and self-hosted options, giving developers flexibility in choosing the best method for managing their code quality monitoring. You can self-host Codacy on Kubernetes or MicroK8s.

Codacy users can interact with the platform programmatically (via the Codacy API) or visually (in the web browser), allowing them to view organization data and perform configuration changes. Codacy’s UI dashboards offer many insights and configuration options, like quality gates, security rules, integrations, and other settings. 

Codacy integrates with nearly every relevant open-source code analysis tool, supports 49 programming languages and tools, and offers a comprehensive resource center for seamless developer onboarding. 

The platform is actively being upgraded to support new features, languages, and tools. It recently introduced penetration testing services for business-tier customers, while Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) is coming soon.

Why Choose Codacy Over Snyk

Snyk focuses on security but lacks comprehensive code analysis features. Teams looking for a unified application security solution may need to use Snyk alongside other tools, potentially complicating their workflow and increasing overall costs.

Codacy, on the other hand, attends to security, quality, and coverage issues. Its holistic approach to application security makes it suitable for organizations of any size and structure. The platform offers a comprehensive security toolbox that removes the need to use anything else.

Codacy also supports more languages than Snyk.

Deepsource

Deepsource is another developer-friendly Snyk alternative for enterprises seeking a comprehensive application security platform. It addresses code quality and security concerns and is designed to integrate easily into existing workflows. 

Key Features:

1. Quality code analysis: Deepsource enables SAST, static, and IaC (Infrastructure-as-Code) analysis. Its static code analysis tool integrates directly with your version control system, runs analysis on every commit, and helps you prevent over 3,000 code quality issues across all major programming languages (including OWASP Top 10 and SANS Top 25).
   
   
2. Low false-positive rate: Deepsource’s false-positive rate is just 5%, lower than most competitors. This is achieved by its powerful post-processing framework designed to show only the most relevant issues without the noise commonly seen in other static analysis tools (like Snyk).
   
   
3. Frictionless developer experience: Deepsource integrates directly with popular version control systems (GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, etc.) and doesn't require CI build integration. Its Visual Studio Code plugin lets you run analysis in real time, helping you identify and fix issues within your IDE window before sending pull requests. 
   
   
4. Auto-fix capabilities: Once configured, Autofix can generate fixes for thousands of issues at once and create a pull request automatically with the fixes. You can run code formatters like Black, Prettier, go fmt, isort, and autopep8 automatically on every commit. Deepsource will apply the changes without requiring any action from you.

Deepsource’s quality gates allow teams to set up gating rules based on issue categories and priorities, which is useful for blocking pull requests that don’t adhere to the organization’s standards. Its dashboard provides a deeper understanding of your organization’s code health with powerful insights, security reports, and historical trends.

Deepsource also offers self-hosting options, allowing you to deploy Deepsource on-premise or your private cloud within minutes. This lets you retain full control of your source code privacy and scale as you need.

Why Choose Deepsource Over Snyk

Deepsource’s static code analyzer can detect over 3,500 code quality and security issues in over 16 programming languages, which is superior to Snyk’s detection capabilities and programming language support.

Another thing to consider is the accuracy of both tools. Deepsource guarantees below 5% false-positive rate. Snyk Code, on the other hand, has more noise and less reliable vulnerability detection. It also provides no mechanism for reporting issues as false positives.

Snyk offers more comprehensive security tools, but Deepsource has a more integrated application security solution. Whether you choose one over the other depends on your specific needs.

Veracode

Veracode is a solid option for enterprises seeking a unified security platform with a seamless developer experience. It offers cloud-based security solutions and services that help to protect the business-critical applications that enterprises rely on daily.  

Key Features: 

1. Comprehensive security coverage: Veracode offers SAST, SCA, DAST, PTaaS (Penetrative Testing), Container Security, and Longbow. This broad coverage allows engineering teams to take a more holistic approach to application security.
   
   
2. Developer-friendly experience: Veracode has integrations for popular SCM tools, IDEs, and cloud platforms. It recently announced a unified SAST and SCA IDE plugin for Visual Studio Code that enables real-time scanning of projects for security weaknesses in first-party code and third-party libraries.
   
   
3. Comprehensive vulnerability database: Veracode maintains a list of third-party libraries with known vulnerabilities in its database. It includes libraries from popular programming languages, operating systems, libraries, versions, and licenses.
   
   
4. AI-assisted flaw remediation: Veracode Fix leverages artificial intelligence to accelerate flaw remediation, boosting developer productivity. The feature is available alongside its scanning technology in the popular IDEs. It’s also available as a command-line tool.
   
   
5. Accurate analysis and low false positives: Veracode boasts a false-positive rate of less than 1.1%, better than most competitors. Such a high level of accuracy frees developers to focus on real issues rather than wasting time on false alarms.

Veracode offers on-demand access to real-life experts, e-learning platforms, security labs, and application security consultants for enhanced team productivity. It provides a unified dashboard with visualizations to help you understand the security status of your application.

Veracode is also highly scalable; you can configure once and onboard thousands of developers simultaneously. 

Why Choose Veracode Over Snyk

While Snyk specializes in security, Veracode offers a more comprehensive application security solution, covering static, dynamic, and composition analysis on a single platform. This makes it more suitable for enterprises looking for a more unified solution.

Like Snyk, Veracode lacks powerful code quality analysis features (at least not as powerful as some alternatives). Teams heavily focused on improving overall code quality, in addition to security, might have to complement it with additional tools.

Veracode also improves developer productivity with its low false-positive rate and AI-assisted flaw remediation, helping developers save significant time compared to Snyk’s sometimes noisy results. 

Checkmarx

Checkmarx provides Checkmarx One, a cloud-native application security platform. As a powerful and scalable alternative to Snyk, it delivers a comprehensive suite of AppSec solutions within a single integrated platform.

Key Features: 

1. Comprehensive security coverage: Checkmarx One offers a comprehensive set of security tools for code security (SAST, API security, and DAST); supply chain security (SCA, SBOOM, and SSCS); and cloud security (Container and IaC). This wide coverage makes it ideal for engineering teams seeking an integrated platform to perform their diverse security functions.
   
   
2. Unified security platform: Checkmarx One integrates and automates multiple AppSec capabilities within the SDLC, providing everything enterprises need to secure application development—from code to cloud. 
   
   
3. Seamless developer experience: CheckmarxOne offers SCM, IDE, CI/CD, and feedback integrations. It also provides a Checkmarx One CLI tool for interacting with the Checkmarx One server, enabling users to manage their Checkmarx projects from their local terminal and display scan results.
   
   
4. AI security: Checkmarx One uses generative AI tools to suggest remediation steps for identified vulnerabilities. It can integrate directly into ChatGPT to automatically scan generated source code and open-source libraries for vulnerabilities. 

Beyond these, Checkmarx One offers multi-language support, personalized code training, and ASPM to help AppSec teams gain valuable insights into the application’s health. The platform consolidates various security metrics into one intuitive dashboard.

Checkmarx One also offers end-to-end API security. Integrate API Security with DAST, and it will find every API in your source code—including shadow or undocumented API—and test them in live applications with DAST.  

Why Choose Checkmarx Over Snyk

Checkmarx offers an integrated solution for addressing code quality and security concerns throughout the SLDC. It has more security features and scales better than Snyk, making it an ideal alternative for large, complex organizations.

Organizations seeking comprehensive code analysis features will have to use Snyk alongside additional security tools, potentially increasing cost and complexity in the workflow. However, switching to Checkmarx One can help reduce the cost of ownership and improve the developer experience.

GitGuardian

GitGuardian is a developer-friendly alternative to Snyk that effectively "guards" your Git-based repositories through real-time monitoring. It also provides additional tools to help keep your application code clean and secure.

Key Features: 

1. Secrets detection: GitGuardian specializes in identifying sensitive data like API keys, passwords, and other secrets embedded in code. It uses advanced algorithms to scan for these secrets in both code repositories and commit histories.
   
   
2. Real-time alerts: The platform provides real-time notifications and alerts when secrets are detected, enabling teams to act quickly to mitigate potential security risks.
   
   
3. Integration with CI/CD Pipelines: It integrates seamlessly with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, allowing for proactive security measures throughout the development lifecycle.
   
   
4. Post-breach monitoring: Beyond detecting secrets in code, GitGuardian can also monitor and alert on exposed secrets that have been leaked or compromised in public forums or on the dark web.

GitGuardian’s unified incident management platform consolidates incidents from source control and productivity tools, offering a comprehensive view and enabling prompt remediation across all monitored assets.

The dashboard provides users with access to all detected secrets and typically assigns them the responsibility of ensuring proper remediation. Users can also collaborate with their team and customize monitoring settings through the dashboard.

Why Choose GitGuardian Over Snyk

While GitGuardian focuses on secrets detection, Snyk provides more comprehensive security solutions, encompassing vulnerabilities in dependencies, container security, and infrastructure as code.

GitGuardian might be more suitable if your primary concern is detecting and managing sensitive information within your code repositories. It excels at identifying and alerting you to secrets like API keys and passwords that may be inadvertently committed to your Git-based repositories.

If you need a more holistic solution that addresses various aspects of application security, including vulnerability management and infrastructure protection, Snyk’s broader capabilities might be more suitable.

Choose The Right Option For Your Team

If you ask us, Codacy is the best possible Snyk alternative, and many of our customers would agree. Codacy offers features that address both code quality and security concerns, a developer-friendly experience, and seamless integration into existing workflows, making it a comprehensive solution that’s hard to beat.

That said, we’ve been transparent about the pros and cons of other options to ensure you have a complete picture. Each alternative has its own unique advantages, especially in relation to Snyk. Ultimately, the best tool is the one that fits your team’s specific needs and enhances your development process.

Ready to experience Codacy's benefits for yourself? Start your free trial today and see how Codacy can transform your code quality and security practices.