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Black Duck vs Snyk comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 8, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Snyk
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
44
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (4th), Container Security (7th), Software Development Analytics (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 20.6%, down from 23.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Snyk is 16.5%, down from 17.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
meetharoon - PeerSpot reviewer
Affordable tool boosts code scanning efficiency but faces integration hurdles
The most important feature of Snyk is its cost-effectiveness compared to other solutions such as Check Point. It is easy to consolidate Snyk across multiple entities within a large organization. Additionally, our integration of Snyk into GitHub allows us to automatically scan codebases and identify issues, which has improved efficiency.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The installation is very easy."
"We accidentally use third-party library APIs, which may not be secure. Our technical team may not have the end time or expertise to figure it out. Black Duck helps us with that and saves us time."
"The automated code scanning feature and Black Duck's integration with our development tools have enhanced our software compliance process and overall audit readiness."
"The solution is very good at scanning and evaluating open source software."
"Black Duck is pretty extensive in terms of the scan reserves and the vulnerability exposures. From that perspective, I'm happy with it."
"Policy management is a valuable feature."
"The most valuable feature is the vulnerability scanning, and that it's easy to use."
"The product enables other applications to be secure."
"Snyk categorizes the level of vulnerability into high, medium, and low, which helps organizations prioritize which issues to tackle first."
"The most valuable feature of Snyk is the software composition analysis."
"It's very easy for developers to use. Onboarding was an easy process for all of the developers within the company. After a quick, half-an-hour to an hour session, they were fully using it on their own. It's very straightforward. Usability is definitely a 10 out of 10."
"The most valuable features include enriched information around the vulnerabilities for better triaging, in terms of the vulnerability layer origin and vulnerability tree."
"Snyk performs software composition analysis (SCA) similar to other expensive tools."
"The solution's Open Source feature gives us notifications and suggestions regarding how to address vulnerabilities."
"Snyk has given us really good results because it is fully automated. We don't have to scan projects every time to find vulnerabilities, as it already stores the dependencies that we are using. It monitors 24/7 to find out if there are any issues that have been reported out on the Internet."
"It is one of the best product out there to help developers find and fix vulnerabilities quickly. When we talk about the third-party software vulnerability piece and potentially security issues, it takes the load off the user or developer. They even provide automitigation strategies and an auto-fix feature, which seem to have been adopted pretty well."
 

Cons

"I would like to see more integration with other solutions, such as IntelliJ IDEA."
"We're not too sure about the extension of the firewall. It never shows up in the Hub."
"It is a cloud-only solution. In many cases, companies like to evaluate the software, but they're very reluctant to give you the software. It would be great if they could offer an on-prem component that could be used to scan the code and then upload the discovery results to the cloud and get all the information from there, but there is no such possibility. You have to upload the code to the Black Duck cloud system. Of course, they have a strong legal department, and they offer some configuration, but it is never enough. You have to give the code, which is a drawback. In modern designs like Snyk or FOSSA, you don't need to give the code. It requires more native integration with Coverity because they go together technically. You need both Coverity and Black Duck Hub. It would be really helpful for companies working in this space to get a combined offer from the same company. They should provide an option to buy Coverity for an additional fee. Coverity combined with Black Duck Hub will provide a one-step analysis to get everything you need and a unified report. It would be really great to be able to connect Black Duck Hub with Coverity unified reports."
"The solution must provide more open APIs."
"It needs to be more user-friendly for developers and in general, to ensure compliance."
"We have been having some issues with the latest releases where we are not able to scan our applications with the help of Black Duck."
"The tool needs to improve its pricing. Its configuration is complex and can be improved."
"I would like to see improvements in Black Duck's reporting capabilities."
"One area where Snyk could improve is in providing developers with the line where the error occurs."
"They need to improve the Snyk plugins and make it easier to make your optimizations based on your own needs or features."
"It would be helpful if we get a recommendation while doing the scan about the necessary things we need to implement after identifying the vulnerabilities."
"Because Snyk has so many integrations and so many things it can do, it's hard to really understand all of them and to get that information to each team that needs it... If there were more self-service, perhaps tutorials or overviews for new teams or developers, so that they could click through and see things themselves, that would help."
"We have seen cases where tools didn't find or recognize certain dependencies. These are known issues, to some extent, due to the complexity in the language or stack that you using. There are some certain circumstances where the tool isn't actually finding what it's supposed to be finding, then it could be misleading."
"The tool needs improvement in license compliance. I would like to see the integration of better policy management in the product's future release. When it comes to the organization that I work for, there are a lot of business units since we are a group of companies. Each of these companies has its specific requirements and its own appetite for risk. This should be able to reflect in flexible policies. We need to be able to configure policies that can be adjusted later or overridden by the business unit that is using the product."
"The product is very expensive."
"We have to integrate with their database, which means we need to send our entire code to them to scan, and they send us the report. A company working in the financial domain usually won't like to share its code or any information outside its network with any third-party provider."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."
"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
"Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."
"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
"It is expensive."
"I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."
"The pricing is a little high."
"For what Snyk offers, it has the best cost-benefit I have ever seen because you're buying the license per user."
"The solution is less expensive than Black Duck."
"It's inexpensive and easy to license. It comes in standard package sizing, which is straightforward. This information is publicly found on their website."
"The price of the solution is expensive compared to other solutions."
"The license model is based on the number of contributing developers. Snyk is expensive, for a startup company will most likely use the community edition, while larger companies will buy the licensed version. The price of Snyk is more than other SLA tools."
"The pricing is acceptable, especially for enterprises. I don't think it's too much of a concern for our customers. Something like $99 per user is reasonable when the stakes are high."
"Despite Snyk's coverage, scalability, reliability, and stability, it is available at a very competitive price."
"Snyk is an expensive solution."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Manufacturing Company
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Healthcare Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What do you like most about Black Duck?
The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?
The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...
How does Snyk compare with SonarQube?
Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to find any issues reported on the internet. It will store dependencies that you a...
What do you like most about Snyk?
The most effective feature in securing project dependencies stems from its ability to highlight security vulnerabilities.
What needs improvement with Snyk?
Snyk has several limitations, including issues with Gradle, NPM, and Xcode, and trouble with AutoPR. It lacks the ability to select branches on its Web UI, forcing users to rely on CLI or CI/CD for...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
StartApp, Segment, Skyscanner, DigitalOcean, Comic Relief
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. Snyk and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.