10 Best Software Composition Analysis Tools (Features and Pricing)

Last updated on by Editorial Staff
Software Composition Analysis Tool

In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, software development often relies on integrating open-source components and third-party libraries to accelerate the creation of feature-rich applications.

Unfortunately, these components can introduce potential security risks and vulnerabilities. As a result, Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Tools have emerged as a critical solution for identifying and managing these risks. 

With many options in the market, you may get confused while selecting the tool. 

This article provides the ten best software composition analysis tools with their features, pricing, likes, and dislikes. 

What are Software Composition Analysis Tools (SCA Tools)?

Software composition analysis tools are security solutions that help organizations identify, manage, and mitigate potential risks and vulnerabilities associated with open-source components and third-party libraries in their software applications. 

These tools provide comprehensive visibility into the composition and dependencies of software applications.

As a result, they enable developers to ensure the security, compliance, and quality of their codebase, ultimately protecting organizations from potential threats and allowing them to deliver secure, high-performing software products to their users.

Common Features of Software Composition Analysis Tools

Dependency analysis

SCA tools automatically scan the application’s codebase to create an inventory of all open-source components and third-party libraries, along with their respective versions and dependencies.

That helps developers understand the extent of external components used in their software.

Vulnerability detection

SCA tools can detect potential security risks and vulnerabilities in the application’s codebase by cross-referencing the identified components with known vulnerability databases, like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) or other proprietary databases.

License compliance

SCA tools analyze the licenses associated with each open-source component, helping organizations adhere to the legal requirements and obligations of using these components in their software.

Prioritization and remediation

Based on the severity of detected vulnerabilities, SCA tools help prioritize which issues need immediate attention and recommend remediation actions, such as updating a component to a more secure version or applying patches.

Integration with development workflows

Many SCA tools integrate with existing development tools and processes, such as continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, issue trackers, and integrated development environments (IDEs), enabling developers to address vulnerabilities and compliance issues early in the development lifecycle.

List of best Software Composition Analysis tools.

1. GitHub

GitHub is an AI pair programmer that empowers you to complete tasks. It assists you in converting natural language into coding language. This unlimited repository helps your team to work together.

Webpage of GitHub

Features

  • Code spaces for individuals
  • Collaborative coding
  • Automation and CI/CD
  • Security
  • Client Apps
  • Project management
  • Team administration 
  • Software life cycle security

Screenshot of GitHub

Home Page of GitHub
Edit new file of Github
Edit new file

Pricing

GitHub provides pricing plans on a monthly and yearly basis. If you are interested in a yearly plan, then a one-month free trial is available.

On a monthly basis, pricing rates are as follows.

  • These plans have categorized three types 
    • Free –  Basics for individuals
    • Team – Advanced collaboration – $4/user/month
    • Enterprise – Flexible deployment – $21/user/month
  • On a yearly basis, pricing rates are as follows;
    • Free –  Basics for individuals
    • Team – only for first 12 months – $3.67/user/month 
    • Enterprise – only for first 12 months – $19.25/user/month
Pricing of GitHub
Pricing of GitHub

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • It is a more reliable tool for source control.
  • This platform is user-friendly.
  • It provides useful features like version control, code review, and project management for developers.
  • You can make group assignments and open-source contributions easily.
  • GitHub repository has a lot of customization potential.

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • Everything is the command line. Remembering all the commands becomes a difficult task.
  • Its functionality is complicated. Using large files can be complex.
  • Beginner takes more time to learn the process.
  • Integrating it with VS code is difficult.
  • It will not provide a customized notification system for mobile apps.
  • For the free version limited number (at least one) of private repositories are available.
  • Only a limited number of users can handle the same project. 

Supported industries

  • Healthcare
  • Financial services
  • Manufacturing

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
SupportEmail/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base
Supported deviceMac, Windows, On-Premise – Windows, Linux, Mobile – Android, iPhone, iPad
TrainingVideos
Customer ratingsCapterra: 4.8 out of 5 (5800 +reviews), G2: 4.7 out of 5 (1967+reviews)

User opinion

GitHub is one of the most exciting startups. It provides a fully managed platform. It is an awesome tool for any user ranging from students to professionals, and is easy to use. This is a highly recommended software to improve your software development workflow.

2. GitLab

If you want to build your enterprise, then GitLab is easy. GitLab’s simple and flexible approaches meet the needs of small teams to large enterprises. It has a simple, flexible approach and helps shorten the delivery lifecycle, streamlining manual processes.

Webpage of GitLab

Features

  • Powerful planning tool
  • Source code management
  • Code review workflow
  • Remote development
  • Continuous integration
  • Code testing and coverage
  • API security
  • Environment management
  • Error tracking

Screenshot of GitLab

Issues of GitLab
Issues
Issues board of Gitlab
Issues board

Pricing

Three different pricing plans are available here. And provides a free trial facility. Go through the below details to learn more about pricing.

  • Free – It is entirely free and suitable for individual users
  • Premium – It starts from $29/user/month
  • Ultimate – You need to contact the vendor
Pricing of GitLab

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • It provides easy configuration and automation.
  • It is a single application covering all departments, including research, QA, security, and operations. 
  • It offers robust branching and merging capabilities.
  • It is easy to use the CLI commands in other automated scripts. 

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • The user interface needs more improvement.  
  • Sometimes you may face problems like connecting to the server.
  • Basic agile tools are used here, so you can’t replace tickets remotely.
  • Understanding coding issues takes more time.
  • You have to update manually from the old version to the new version. 
  • The level of support is insufficient, particularly for complex or advanced use cases.

Supported industries

  • Financial services
  • Public sector
  • Education

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
SupportFAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base,24/7 (Live Rep), Chat
Supported deviceOn-Premise – Windows, Linux, Mobile – iPhone, iPad
Supported languagesEnglish
TrainingIn-person, Live Online, Webinars, Documentation, Videos
Customer ratingsCapterra: 4.6 out of 5 (970+reviews)
G2: 4.5 out of 5 (700 +reviews)

User opinion

GitLab empowers development security and operations so teams can build better software faster. It has an integrated approach that eliminates the need for multiple tools. You can face some billing issues, and handling large projects would be difficult.

3. Wiz

Wiz provides full visibility to cloud workloads. It simplifies cloud operation by providing a single policy for both developer and security. So your company can proactively improve your cloud security posture. With the help of lac code, you can build your policies and framework.

Webpage of Wiz

Features

  • Compliance automation 
  • Automatic posture management
  • No deployment agents
  • Deep assessment 
  • Unified code and cloud policy 
  • Custom framework
  • Flexible reporting
  • Cloud-native incident response 
  • Analyze effective permission
  • Vulnerability management

Pricing

Pricing details are not provided on their website. 

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • Easy to use and operate 
  • It provides great insight into infrastructure configuration issues
  • It gives significantly improved visibility into the cloud security posture
  • It has the best CSPM 

software composition analysis toolsDislikes 

  • These systems are tedious to setup
  • Some of the integrations feel half-baked or incomplete
  • Wiz makes significant changes quickly; these changes sometimes cause errors in tools
  • Only a chat option is available to make contact
  • It provides fewer options to generate reports

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Supported languagesEnglish
Customer ratingG2: 4.7out of 5 (339+reviews)

User opinion 

Wiz continuously monitors the environment for new vulnerabilities and provides a real-time risk assessment. It enables you to protect cloud data. You can quickly access your compliance and focus more on your teams. It cannot use the word  “AND / OR “ in queries.  

4. Snyk

Snyk is a developer security platform enabling you to secure the whole application, providing actionable insights and workflows. It has expertise with advanced ML and human-in-the-loop AI. It finds vulnerabilities in real-time and then offers actionable fix advice. 

Webpage of Snyk

Features

  • Easy integration 
  • Continuous scan 
  • Fix with a click 
  • Vulnerability database
  • Governance at scale 
  • Code security
  • Security of base images
  • Development life cycle security

Screenshot of Snyk

Request page of Snyk
Request

Pricing

Snyk offers free demos for its users, and it has three different pricing plans; they are as follows. 

  • Free – It is entirely free
  • Team – It starts from $25/month and is billed monthly
  • Enterprise – You can have customized offers based on your needs 
Pricing of Snyk

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • It is easy to integrate.
  • It shows category-wise vulnerabilities like critical, high, medium, and low.
  • Snyk is extremely straightforward; It doesn’t require the team to review extensive documentation. 
  • Automated repository analysis is good.

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • Compared to other tools, it is less efficient and useful.
  • Its unavailability issues can cause the Snyk code to fail.
  • Need more improvement in code quality suggestions.
  • More information is needed to do documentation.
  • Its reported vulnerabilities scan takes more time.

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
SupportKnowledge Base, Chat
Supported deviceDesktop – Mac, Windows
TrainingIn-person, Live Online, Webinars, Documentation
Customer RatingsCapterra: 4.8 out of 5 (17+reviews), G2: 4.6 out of 5 (108+reviews)

User opinion

Snyk is even better and warns you before merging your pull requests. It is a developer security platform for securing custom code.

Its security solutions enable modern applications to build securely. However, it is easy to use on existing products. Overall, it is a great tool for security analysts, not for security engineers.

5. Azure Microsoft Defender Cloud

The Microsoft defender cloud offers integrated security for multi-cloud and hybrid environments. This tool helps you achieve real-time security access and fix issues with integrated insights from code to runtime.   

Webpage of Microsoft Azure

Features

  • Contextual security posture management
  • Modern threat detection 
  • Unify security management 
  • Real-time security access
  • Centralized insights across multipipeline
  • Hybrid cloud and infrastructure

Screenshot of Microsoft Defender for cloud

Home page of Microsoft Azure
Home page
Secure score of defender
Secure score
Medium of Microsoft defender for cloud

Pricing 

It offers an Azure free account with $200 credits to use within 30 days. It provides free services. After that credit, you can use the pay-as-you-go option to keep the free services and pay only if you exceed the free monthly amounts.

After a year, you will keep getting more than 55 free services and must pay only when you exceed the free amount.

software composition analysis toolsLikes 

  • It gives insight into user actions
  • It is easy to automate 
  • It has straight forward dashboard
  • It is easy to use and manage security across multiple platforms. 

software composition analysis toolsDislikes 

  • Difficult to protect unmatched cloud devices with this software.
  • Some of the default alerts do not trigger emails. 
  • Needs more SaaS integrations.
  • Sometimes not updated with the latest threat.
  • Embedding with third-party apps would be challenging.  

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
TrainingLive Online, Webinars, Documentation, Videos
Customer RatingsCapterra: 5.0 out of 5 (1+reviews), G2: 5.0 out of 5 (1+reviews)

User opinion 

Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides security assessments for cloud resources running in Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud. It enhances security postures, protects against modern threats, and reduces risks. In addition, it works seamlessly with all other Microsoft services.

6. Mend.io

Mendi.io is formerly known as WhiteSource. It can build world-class AppSec programs, which help global organizations. It is an autopilot for AppSec.  

Webpage of Mend

Features

  • Application security
  • Open source audit
  • Open source security
  • Malicious package protection
  • Software supply chain security
  • Open-source license compliance
  • Software bill of materials

Screenshot of Mend.io

Summary of Mend.io
Summary display

Pricing

The pricing plan offers three plans.

  • Mend renovate
    • Its starting price is $25000 per year for 100 developers
  • Mend SCA
    • Its starting price is $18000 per year for 25 developers.
  • Mend Container
    • Its starting pricing price is $15000 per year for 100 developers
  • Mend SAST
  • Its starting pricing price is $18000 per year for 25 developers
Pricing of Mend

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • It is very easy to break down and analyze all the open-source packages.
  • It can easily integrate with the workflow.
  • It analyzes in-house and other multiple sources.

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • Customer service is not so good.
  • The dashboard and UI are not user-friendly.
  • The data are not available in the dashboard.
  • The implementation is challenging.
  • Unable to configure and work with.
  • The documentation is much clingy.
  • The generation of SBOM is much odd.
  • It shows invalid vulnerabilities.

Other details

Supported languagesEnglish
Customer ratingG2: 4.3 out of 5 ( 99+reviews)

User opinion

Mendi.io is a great tool for building a world-class AppSec program that reduces risk and accelerates development. It helps to modernize your application security program with automation and scalability.

The SBOMs can make the applications more secure than ever before. On the other hand, you will have increased visibility and control over open-source usage and licensing.

7. SOOS SCA+DAS

It is an affordable software that integrates into your build pipeline and consolidates DAST test results with SOOS SCA scan results in a single powerful web dashboard.

Webpage of SOOS SCA Das

Features

  • License analysis
  • SBOM
  • Typo detection
  • Unlimited scans
  • CI/CD integrations
  • Vulnerability ranking

Some screenshots of SOOS

Developer page of Soos
Developer
Developer page of Soos

Pricing

The software offers two types of plan, which bills monthly and annually.

  • SOOS Core
    • $199 per month and $2250 per year
  • SOOS DAST
    • $398 per month and $4499 per year
Pricing of SOOS
Pricing of SOOS

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • It is a simple and user-friendly software
  • The software helps to find issues and report them 
  • It allows all types of customization
  • It will enable the simple integration
  • It is very easy to setup

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • Single-click report migration is not there, and the software seems very difficult to use for some users.
  • It consumes a lot of manual effort.
  • There is no feature to expose the vulnerabilities, along with the recommendations to solve them.
  • The dashboard does not allow any filters.
  • The dashboard is not containing whole reports, and migration helps.
  • It is unclear to scan the next moment of the reports.

Other details

Supported languagesEnglish
Customer rating G2-4.6 out 5 (24+reviews)

User opinion

The software, With SCA tools, can scan the open-source supply chain and generate Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) to ensure that all components are properly licensed and free of vulnerabilities.

In addition, the SCA tools automatically integrate with your CI/CD pipeline and Issue Management Tools to find and fix vulnerabilities.

8. CAST Highlight

This software act as a control tower for organizations’ portfolio. It can understand multi-technology software systems and automatically derives insights about their inner workings. It is a software intelligence product.

Webpage of Cast Highilight

Features

  • Open source risk control
  • Software assessment
  • Software composition
  • Application portfolio governance

Screenshot of Cast Highlight

Home page of Cast Highlights
Home page

Pricing

It offers annual pricing by the size of the application portfolio for unlimited users.

The subscription sizes are S, M, L, XL, and XXL, and the portfolio sizes are 25, 100, 250, 500, 1000.

The pricing plan offers four types of plans, and they are complete, cloud, SCA, and green.

Subscription sizeSMLXLXXL
Portfolio Size (Max # of Apps)251002505001000
Complete$36k$99k$160k$240k$390k
Cloud $26k$74k$109k$171k$285k
SCA$27k$77k$115k$180k$296k
Green$10k$25k$38k$60k$99k

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • The software business impact versus effort is helpful for CIOs
  • It is very straightforward to use
  • It is easy to implement

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • It does not work as a desktop application
  • Suggestions are repetitive
  • The user interface is clingy
  • It does not support UI and MAC OS
  • The visualization of dependencies between applications is possible
  • It is time-consuming software

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
SupportEmail/Help Desk, FAQs/Forum, Knowledge Base,
Supported deviceDesktop – Mac, Windows, Linux, Chromebook
Supported languagesEnglish, French, Japanese, Chinese
Customer rating G2: 4.5 out of 5 (56+reviews)

User opinion

It efficiently analyzes your application’s cloud readiness and identifies potential open-source risks across your portfolio.

With its cutting-edge cloud pattern analysis technology, this platform can quickly and automatically assess your applications’ suitability, helping streamline the migration process and ensure the systems are fully optimized for the cloud environment.

In addition, CAST Highlight can help to identify potential vulnerabilities in the open source codebase, allowing them to address critical issues before they become major problems. 

9. Contrast Security

Contrast security is the industry’s most modern tool. It automatically detects vulnerabilities in the code when the developers write it. In addition, it eliminates false positives and provides context-specific how-to-fix guidance for easy and fast vulnerability remediation. 

Webpage of Contrast Security

Features

  • Software supply chain security
  • Dependency risk management
  • Software development lifecycle visibility
  • Third-party software testing
  • Real-time inventory and governance
  • Runtime library usage

Some screenshots of Contrast Security

Homepage of Contrast Security
Homepage
Overview of Casthighlight
Overview

Pricing

Contact the vendor for pricing details.

Pricing of Contrast Security

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • The interface is very much convenient
  • It spots errors very quickly
  • It supports the growing industries
  • It integrates well with the CI/CD

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • It doesn’t integrate with some of the software applications
  • The license structure is not visible inside the tool
  • The inventory system is much clingy

Supported industries

  • Government
  • Financial service
  • Healthcare
  • Others

Other details

DeploymentCloud, SaaS, Web-Based
Supported languagesEnglish, Japanese
Customer rating G2: 4.4 out of 5(30+reviews)

User opinion

This software can protect the code with speed and accuracy. The unified platform makes security seamless from development to production, so it can focus on developing quality code.

The software automates testing, empowering developers to secure their code in real-time. In addition, it defends against vulnerabilities in production, all through a single DevSecOps platform that gets secure code.

10. MergeBase

MergeBase offers a software composition analysis platform that assists in managing vulnerabilities and license risks throughout the entire development process of your applications.

The platform guides developers based on risk, compatibility, and popularity. It also alerts about vulnerabilities in applications running in production, including those from third-party components and software.

Webpage of MergeBase

Features

  • Enterprise application vulnerabilities detection
  • Intelligent remediation
  • Vulnerability prevention
  • Open-source risk visibility

Screenshot of MergeBase

Overview of Mergebase
Overview

Pricing

The pricing offers three types of plans.

  • The team offers $380 per month.
  • The business offers $513 per month.
  • The enterprise offers custom pricing.
Pricing of Mergebase

software composition analysis toolsLikes

  • The software provides real-time vulnerability of the applications
  • It has a focus on false positive rates
  • It is a great tool for measuring the risk and security

software composition analysis toolsDislikes

  • It offers higher pricing compared to competitors.
  • It provides poor technical support.
  • You need to put in more manual effort while working with the software.

Other details

Supported languagesEnglish
Customer rating G2: 4.5 out of ( 20+reviews)

User opinion

MergeBase can manage open-source risks in every situation. It can be confident that it is getting accurate information about potential vulnerabilities.

The platform uses advanced algorithms to analyze code and identify security issues. As a result, the software can speed up the development process without sacrificing security.

On the other hand, it integrates seamlessly into your SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), so it can quickly catch and fix vulnerabilities.

Conclusion

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools are crucial for organizations to ensure the security, compliance, and overall quality of software applications that rely on open-source components and third-party libraries.

As the reliance on open-source components grows, adopting SCA tools becomes increasingly essential for organizations to protect their applications and meet regulatory requirements.

We hope the information on tools listed in the article is beneficial for you in selecting the suitable one.

Reference