Renovate vs Semgrep

Free and open source

From $40 per contributor/month (indicative)

Free and open source, including the hosted GitHub app. Mend sells an enterprise edition with support.

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

Everything, self-hosted

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

Category standard

Mend.io · since 2017

Widely used

Semgrep · since 2020

• Far more configurable than Dependabot — grouping, scheduling and automerge rules that keep PR volume sane.
• Supports dozens of package managers including Docker, Terraform, Helm and GitHub Actions.
• Free hosted app, or self-host it entirely.

• 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.

• The configuration surface is large enough to be its own learning curve.
• Without careful grouping rules it produces a lot of pull requests.
• Vulnerability context is thinner than a dedicated SCA tool.

• 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.

Teams that outgrew Dependabot's limited configuration and want update policy under control.

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