Dependabot vs Checkmarx One

Free

Quote on request

Completely free. Advanced Security features such as code scanning are separately licensed.

Enterprise annual licensing, typically by developer count or lines of code. Six figures at scale.

Free on all GitHub repositories including private ones.

Free trial.

Category standard

GitHub (Microsoft) · since 2017

Widely used

Checkmarx · since 2006

• Free and requires a single config file to enable.
• Version-bump pull requests mean remediation is a review, not a task.
• Grouped updates keep the PR volume manageable.

• Very deep SAST analysis with wide language coverage including legacy enterprise languages.
• One platform and one risk view across every scan type.
• Strong compliance and audit reporting.

• No reachability analysis, so it reports vulnerabilities in code you never call.
• PR noise is a genuine problem on large dependency trees without grouping configured.
• GitHub only.

• Expensive, with a long procurement and deployment cycle.
• High false-positive volume typical of deep SAST; tuning is a project.
• Scans are slow relative to developer-first tools.

Every GitHub repository, as the free baseline before considering a paid SCA tool.

Large enterprises with a security function and regulatory obligations.