Dependabot vs GitGuardian

Free

Free tier available

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

Free tier covers small teams entirely; business pricing is quote-based per developer.

Free on all GitHub repositories including private ones.

Free for individuals and teams up to 25 developers.

Category standard

GitHub (Microsoft) · since 2017

Widely used

GitGuardian · since 2017

• 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.

• Validity checking distinguishes a live credential from a revoked one, which transforms triage priority.
• Scans full commit history, where most leaked secrets actually live.
• Free for teams up to 25 developers.

• 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.

• Secrets scanning only — not a general security platform.
• Historical scans on old repositories produce a large initial backlog.
• Requires repository access, which needs a security review of its own.

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

Any organisation with more than a handful of repositories and no secrets scanning today.