GitGuardian vs Semgrep

Free tier available

From $40 per contributor/month (indicative)

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

The CLI plus community rules costs nothing and covers a lot; paid tiers add the platform, supply chain and secrets.

Free for individuals and teams up to 25 developers.

Open-source CLI is free and complete; hosted platform free for up to 10 contributors.

Widely used

GitGuardian · since 2017

Widely used

Semgrep · since 2020

• 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.

• Custom rules are genuinely writable — you can encode your own security or architecture standards in an afternoon.
• Free CLI with a large community rule registry is immediately useful.
• Fast enough to run on every pull request without complaint.

• 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.

• Pattern matching without full dataflow misses some vulnerability classes.
• Community rule quality is uneven; expect to curate.
• Advanced dataflow and supply-chain features are paid only.

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

Teams that want customisable static analysis and can start entirely for free.