GitGuardian alternatives: Gitleaks vs GitGuardian

Hey there! If you’re researching different options for a new git secrets scanning solution then you’re probably looking to compare GitGuardian with other solutions to figure out which one is right for you. To help make this as easy as possible, we’ve put together a detailed overview of how GitGuardian stacks up to Gitleaks.

Below you’ll find a very transparent comparison of the main features, and even a set of cases where GitGuardian is not the best choice, and recommendations for when Gitleaks might work better than GitGuardian!

Let's compare!

The space is evolving quickly, and we make our best efforts to keep information on our competitors up to date. If you see any information that you consider outdated or unfair with our competitors, please contact us and we will immediately set the record straight!

General capabilities

(for both public and internal monitoring products)

Enriched interface and centralization of incidents

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Rich UI with all data needed for investigation and remediation

Yes

-- No

InfoSec team view (global view)

Yes

-- No

Developer view (local view)

Yes

++ Yes (with GitHub actions)

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Detection

Harvest candidates

Filter false positives

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Regular expressions to match known, distinct patterns

Yes - Over %ndet% secrets detectors (API keys, database connection strings, certificates, usernames and passwords, ...)

++ Yes - Regex on characters chains + entropy filters

High entropy checks to match credentials without distinct patterns and enter “paranoid” mode

Yes, in combination with other techniques to get rid of false positives.

++ Yes, but high level of false positive. Entropy level can be customised by end user.

Contextual analysis

Yes. The context of a presumed credential can help a lot to filter bad candidates (e.g. the import of an API wrapper is a strong indicator of a true positive).

-- No

Credential validity checks

Yes, where feasible.

-- No

Dictionary of anti-patterns

Yes - Ability to exclude folders such as test folders and filter certain credentials like those containing "EXAMPLE" or "QWERTY" in them (placeholders).

++ Yes, manually for each rule you can specify an allowlist regex.

Feedback loop to constantly improve the algorithms

Yes. Approx. %secrets-scanned-in-a-day% alerts sent per day!

-- No

Sensitive File names

Sensitive filetypes raise specific alerts: policy breaks.

-- No

Ability to define custom detectors

Yes, but only through our support and if the detector can be deployed for all customers. Full ability to define custom detectors to be expected in H2 2021.

++ Yes

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Alerting

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Real-time alerting

Yes

-- No

Email alerting

Yes

-- No

Splunk

Native integration

Slack alerting

Yes

-- No

JIRA

Native integration (Q4 2021)

Custom webhook to integrate anywhere

Available to push alerts (JSON output format)

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Incident Life Cycle Management

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Collect and structure weak signals to prioritize incidents

Yes - For example, credentials containing “admin” or “prod” in their context can be prioritized.

-- No

Ability to assign incidents / mark them as resolved / etc.

Yes

-- No

Whitelisting

Yes - Whitelist credentials or folders such as test folders.

++ Yes

Grouping / deduplication of alerts

Yes - Multiple alerts related to the same leaked credential are grouped and can be resolved in a unified manner. No need to triage/resolve every single occurrence.

-- No

REST API

API to retrieve and update secrets incidents

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“Shift left”

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Put the developer in the loop

InfoSec can collect feedback from the developers directly in the dashboard and collaborate in order to remediate.

-- No

“Auto-heal” incidents

Developers have the ability to resolve certain incidents by themselves without involving InfoSec if not needed.

-- No

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SDLC stage scanning capabilities

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Pre-commit

Supported through GitGuardian Shield (view documentation here)

Pre-push

Supported through GitGuardian Shield (view documentation here)

Pre-receive

Supported but not recommended because "pre receive" can block developers and create friction

Post-receive

Yes, supported natively. Real-time incremental scanning.

CI pipeline

Natively integrates with GitLab pipelines, in addition to CircleCI, Travis CI, Drone CI...

Full historical scan

Yes, can be launched on-demand through the interface

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Reporting

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

In app

Yes - Global Health Status, MTTD / MTTR, etc.

-- No

Data exporting

Yes - Enriched data can be exported in CSV format.

++ Yes (Only one scan at a time)

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Security

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

SSO authentication

Yes

-- No

RBAC

Yes - Roles available: Owner / Manager (Admin) / Members.

-- No

Audit trail

Yes

-- No

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Public monitoring product

(On top of general capabilities)

Monitoring

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Monitor all GitHub public activity, at scale

Yes

-- No - You need to direct Gitleaks against repositories you know exist

Reliably filter public activity on GitHub that is linked with your company

Yes - We have the ability to match developers, source code and companies using a unique combination of heuristics. Contact us, we will show you our results for your company!

-- No

Identify and monitor developers’ personal repositories

Yes - This is where 80% of corporate leaks occur on GitHub.

-- No

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Deployment
of the solution

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Available in SaaS

Yes

-- No

Available On Prem

No - GitGuardian Public Monitoring scans only public data, thus on prem is often not a requirement for our customers.

Open source

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Internal monitoring product

(On top of general capabilities)

Integration with the Version Control System

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

GitHub native integration

Yes - Integration at the GitHub Org level with the ability to select monitored repositories

-- No

GitLab native integration

Yes - Integration at the instance level on full perimeter or at the group level

-- No

Bitbucket native integration

Yes - Bitbucket Server/Data Center customer only

-- No

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Secure the SDLC and more

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Detection API to integrate anywhere in the SLDC and the tools developers use

Yes - Integrate GitGuardian as a pre-commit or scan Slack messages for secrets using our API (that can be self-hosted)

++ Yes

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Alerting

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Notification for the developer, directly in the VCS frontend

Yes - GitHub only

++ Yes

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Deployment of the solution

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

Available in SaaS

Yes

-- No

Available On Prem

Yes - For more than 200 developers or 30k$ annual contract

Open source

Pricing

Individual developer: Free
Small team (<25 dev): Free
Enterprise (>25 dev): Yearly fee based on the number of developers included in the surveillance perimeter

Free

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Multi source scanning

GitGuardian

Gitleaks

VCS

Integrates natively with GitHub, in addition to GitLab and Bitbucket.

-- -

Docker image scanning

Yes

-- -

Other sources

REST API to scan any plain text by leveraging GitGuardian’s secrets detection engine.

-- -

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The short version

Choosing Gitleaks or GitGuardian for git secrets scanning is mostly a question of build or buy. As a famous open source software, Gitleaks is a good base to build on if you decide to build rather than buy.

The answer to the build vs buy question depends on your precise requirements and the exact goals that you’re trying to achieve. For example, you might not need a rich dashboard or real-time scanning, which lowers the cost of building and maintaining an in-house tool.

By the way, we’ve written a comprehensive article if you’d like to explore building a tool such as GitGuardian yourself. In our article, you will learn more about how SAP (NYSE:SAP) built an internal secrets detection solution. Hopefully this will help you!

We also have a significant experience in building TCO analyses and strong use cases for security leadership, so don’t hesitate to contact our sales team.

GitGuardian is best if:

You want a ready-to-use solution with many capabilities that go beyond detection such as dashboarding, alerting, incident lifecycle management and reporting, etc.
You have numerous repos or large developer teams and you’re looking for enterprise-grade software.
You fall in our free tier (individual developer and teams below 25 developers), and free and easy-to-use is great!

Gitleaks is best if:

You don’t fall in our free tier and you don’t want to pay for a solution.
You have a small developer team, few repositories or secrets to protect so it is not worth paying for a subscription.
You prefer monitoring internal repositories manually.