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FOSSA vs FlexNet Code Insight comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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

FlexNet Code Insight
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
17th
Average Rating
4.0
Number of Reviews
1
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
FOSSA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
9th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of FlexNet Code Insight is 1.3%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FOSSA is 3.1%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
FOSSA3.1%
FlexNet Code Insight1.3%
Other95.6%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

A decent web interface for reports, but the snippet style code matching requires too much effort
Due to the "snippet match" nature of the scans, we found that it was too much effort to properly validate and catalog each open source component with every new project/product. Incremental results were also difficult to achieve even after consulting with the vendor. We found there were too many false positives and the code-snippet validator had bugs and presented too many false positives. My experience with this tool has turned me away from "snippet"-focused composition analysis. We have switched to one that uses more complete code signatures that do not require validation and review of findings in most cases.
reviewer2588340 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dependency management enhanced with update suggestions but lacks precise vulnerability tracking
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact line numbers for bugs. Also, the process in FOSSA can be quite contradicting and not very straightforward for new users.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It had a web interface into the reporting tools that was decent, and open source components could be reported per project and/or aggregated similar to other software composition tools."
"Being able to know the licenses of the libraries is most valuable because we sell products, and we need to provide to the customers the licenses that we are using."
"Policies and identification of open-source licensing issues are the most valuable features. It reduces the time needed to identify open-source software licensing issues."
"One of the things that I really like about FOSSA is that it allows you to go very granular. For example, if there's a package that's been flagged because it's subject to a license that may be conflicts with or raises a concern with one of the policies that I've set, then FOSSA enables you to go really granular into that package to see which aspects of the package are subject to which licenses. We can ultimately determine with our engineering teams if we really need this part of the package or not. If it's raising this flag, we can make really actionable decisions at a very micro level to enable the build to keep pushing forward."
"The support team has just been amazing, and it helps us to have a great support team from FOSSA. They are there to triage and answer all our questions which come up by using their product."
"FOSSA is easy to use and set up, provides relatively accurate results, and doesn't require armies of people to get value from its use."
"The scalability is excellent."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."
"FOSSA allows us to keep track of all dependencies to ensure they are up to date and not causing any vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"I found the user interface cumbersome and difficult to use."
"Security scanning is an area for improvement. At this point, our experience is that we're only scanning for license information in components, and we're not scanning for security vulnerability information. We don't have access to that data. We use other tools for that. It would be an improvement for us to use one tool instead of two, so that we just have to go through one process instead of two."
"On the dashboard, there should be an option to increase the column width so that we can see the complete name of the GitHub repository. Currently, on the dashboard, we see the list of projects, but to see the complete name, you have to hover your mouse over an item, which is annoying."
"The solution provides contextualized, actionable, intelligence that alerts us to compliance issues, but there is still a little bit of work to be done on it. One of the issues that I have raised with FOSSA is that when it identifies an issue that is an error, why is it in error? What detail can they give to me? They've improved, but that still needs some work. They could provide more information that helps me to identify the dependencies and then figure out where they originated from."
"We have seen some inaccuracies or incompleteness with the distribution acknowledgments for an application, so there's certainly some room for improvement there. Another big feature that's missing that should be introduced is snippet matching, meaning, not just matching an entire component, but matching a snippet of code that had been for another project and put in different files that one of our developers may have created."
"I would like the FOSSA API to be broader. I would like not to have to interact with the GUI at all, to do the work that I want to do. I would like them to do API-first development, rather than a focus on the GUI."
"The technical support has room for improvement."
"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."
"If you have thousands of applications, organizing them all into teams or tags is challenging."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Manufacturing Company
21%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
7%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
 

Questions from the Community

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?
The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...
What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
 

Comparisons

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck, Snyk, Veracode and others in Software Composition Analysis (SCA). Updated: January 2026.
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