Black Duck SCA vs FOSSA comparison

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Black Duck SCA

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 21, 2025

Black Duck SCA and FOSSA are competitors in the software composition analysis domain. Data comparisons indicate that FOSSA has an advantage in terms of overall satisfaction, thanks to its feature set and perceived value, while Black Duck SCA excels in compliance management.

Features: Black Duck SCA offers powerful compliance management, deep license risk analysis, and comprehensive security risk assessment. FOSSA is known for its seamless integrations, real-time vulnerability alerts, and efficient dependency management.

Room for Improvement: Black Duck SCA could enhance its user interface, simplify deployment processes, and improve real-time vulnerability detection. FOSSA could improve its analysis of proprietary code, broaden its vulnerability database beyond NVD, and offer more in-depth guidance on resolving issues.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Black Duck SCA provides a thorough deployment model with reliable support, though it can be time-consuming. FOSSA offers agile deployment and prompt customer service, facilitating a smoother adoption process.

Pricing and ROI: Black Duck SCA requires a larger initial investment but offers a strong return on investment through risk management. FOSSA's competitive pricing and efficient deployment offer an attractive ROI, maximizing its value proposition.

To learn more, read our detailed Black Duck SCA vs. FOSSA Report (Updated: December 2025).

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Black Duck SCA vs. FOSSA

December 2025

Helped 881,078 peers since 2012

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck SCA

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

2nd

Average Rating

7.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.4

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

FOSSA

Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

9th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck SCA is 12.5%, down from 20.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of FOSSA is 3.1%, down from 3.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
Black Duck SCA	12.5%
FOSSA	3.1%
Other	84.4%

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

Featured Reviews

reviewer2587080

IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Delivers robust accuracy for identifying and mitigating risks but setup and security can improve

My deployment of Black Duck will take a few hours minimum. In the earlier on-premise scenario, which I've seen in other organizations, it takes a few days because you have to get the server installed, then actually keep installing various patch upgrades as it happens. The cloud version is a lot faster, probably taking only a few hours to complete. Regarding Black Duck leveraging AI to enhance security scanning of open-source components, I would not be able to address that because I have not yet explored that area significantly. Based on my experience, I would recommend Black Duck to other people if they can digest the higher cost. It helps in many aspects. I would rate this solution overall at 7 to 8. Disclaimer: The review is provided in personal capacity as an individual and not the opinion of the organization or corporate to which I belong to.

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reviewer2588340

Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Dependency management enhanced with update suggestions but lacks precise vulnerability tracking

FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact line numbers for bugs. Also, the process in FOSSA can be quite contradicting and not very straightforward for new users.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"We didn't have a central inventory to quickly identify issues or determine how many products were affected. Now under Black Duck, it's all consolidated. You search for a component and immediately see which products use it."

"The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution."

"The solution works well on Mac products."

"The knowledge base and the management system are the most valuable features of Black Duck Hub. It has a very helpful management environment. They offer an editor where we can check the discovered license, which is retrieved from their knowledge base. They have a huge knowledge base build over the years. It gives you some possibilities, such as this license with possibility A could cause a vulnerability issue or a potential breach."

"The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the seamless integration to scan our Docker binary files, it provides us all open vulnerabilities, and it ensures a reference point from where it finds the vulnerability is up to date. For example, if there is any new vulnerability found, they are immediately available in the Black Duck. There is no delay in finding the vulnerabilities, they are called out in our code immediately."

"The UI is the solution's most valuable feature since it allows for easy pipeline integration."

"The most valuable feature for me in Black Duck is its ability to scan binary files effectively."

"The solution is stable."

More Black Duck SCA pros

"FOSSA allows us to keep track of all dependencies to ensure they are up to date and not causing any vulnerabilities."

"The most valuable feature is its ability to identify all of the components in a build, and then surface the licenses that are associated with it, allowing us to make a decision as to whether or not we allow a team to use the components. That eliminates the risk that comes with running consumer software that contains open source components."

"The most valuable feature is definitely the ease and speed of integrating into build pipelines, like a Jenkins pipeline or something along those lines. The ease of a new development team coming on board and integrating FOSSA with a new project, or even an existing project, can be done so quickly that it's invaluable and it's easy to ask the developers to use a tool like this. Those developers greatly value the very quick feedback they get on any licensing or security vulnerability issues."

"The support team has just been amazing, and it helps us to have a great support team from FOSSA. They are there to triage and answer all our questions which come up by using their product."

"Policies and identification of open-source licensing issues are the most valuable features. It reduces the time needed to identify open-source software licensing issues."

"I found FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine to be accurate and that it was tuned appropriately to the settings that we were looking for. The policy engine is pretty straightforward... I find it to be very straightforward to make small modifications to, but it's very rare that we have to make modifications to it. It's easy to use. It's a four-category system that handles most cases pretty well."

"FOSSA suggests solutions for dependency mismatches."

"FOSSA is easy to use and set up, provides relatively accurate results, and doesn't require armies of people to get value from its use."

More FOSSA pros

Cons

"The tool's documentation and support are areas of concern where improvements are required."

"They are giving a lot of APIs and Python scripts for certain functionalities, but instead of using APIs and Python scripts, they should provide these functionalities through the UI. Users should be able to customize and add more fields through the UI. Users should be able to add more fields and generate reports. Currently, they are not giving flexibility in the UI. They're providing a script that simply generates an Excel file or CSV file. There is no flexibility."

"The initial setup of Black Duck is complex. It's not very straightforward. You need a lot of support and hand-holding from the Black Duck team itself for it to be deployed successfully across the organization."

"The solution's pricing model and documentation areas of concern where improvement is needed."

"Due to the fact that, with our software developer life cycle, we don't need to scan our source code every day or every week. For that reason, we find the cost is too high. We might only actually use it five to ten times a year, which makes it expensive."

"I would like to see more integration with other solutions, such as IntelliJ IDEA."

"The scanner client is limited by the size of software it can handle."

"It's still a bit inconsistent. For example, if I scan today, it might not show the same results tomorrow."

More Black Duck SCA cons

"FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually."

"I would like more customized categories because our company is so big. This is doable for them. They are still in the stages of trying to figure this out since we are one of their biggest companies that they support."

"I want the product to include binary scanning which is missing at the moment. Binary scanning includes code and component matching through dependency management. It also includes the actual scanning and reverse engineering of the boundaries and finding out what is inside."

"I would like the FOSSA API to be broader. I would like not to have to interact with the GUI at all, to do the work that I want to do. I would like them to do API-first development, rather than a focus on the GUI."

"On the legal and policy sides, there is some room for improvement. I know that our legal team has raised complaints about having to approve the same dependency multiple times, as opposed to having them it across the entire organization."

"If you have thousands of applications, organizing them all into teams or tags is challenging."

"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."

"The solution provides contextualized, actionable, intelligence that alerts us to compliance issues, but there is still a little bit of work to be done on it. One of the issues that I have raised with FOSSA is that when it identifies an issue that is an error, why is it in error? What detail can they give to me? They've improved, but that still needs some work. They could provide more information that helps me to identify the dependencies and then figure out where they originated from."

More FOSSA cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."

"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."

"I rate the product's price one on a scale of one to ten, where one is a high price, and ten is a low price."

"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."

"Black Duck is more suitable if you require a lot of licensing compliance. For smaller organizations, WhiteSource is better because its pricing policies are not really suitable for huge organizations."

"The pricing is a little high."

"It is expensive."

"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."

"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."

"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."

"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."

"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."

"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

17%

Manufacturing Company

17%

Computer Software Company

12%

Healthcare Company

Manufacturing Company

21%

Financial Services Firm

11%

Computer Software Company

Comms Service Provider

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	6
Large Enterprise	16

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Midsize Enterprise	1
Large Enterprise	8

Questions from the Community

How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?

We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...

What do you like most about Black Duck?

The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?

The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for FOSSA?

The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free. You have to pay for the features you need, which I think is fair. If you want to get value for free...

What needs improvement with FOSSA?

What is your primary use case for FOSSA?

I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...

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Compared 22% of the time

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Compared 10% of the time

Mend.io vs FOSSA

Compared 9% of the time

Sonatype Lifecycle vs FOSSA

Compared 6% of the time

Veracode vs FOSSA

Compared 6% of the time

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Product Reports

Download Black Duck SCA product report

Black Duck SCA

January 2026

Download FOSSA product report

January 2026

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker

No data available

Overview

Black Duck is an essential tool for software composition analysis and license compliance. It identifies vulnerabilities effectively and supports security management in DevOps environments, offering integration, performance stability, and community support.

Organizations rely on Black Duck for seamless integration in CI/CD pipelines, thorough scanning of source and binary codes, and management of operational risks associated with open-source and commercial licenses. It plays a crucial role in security risk management and delivers a robust policy management framework. Users value its ease of use and reliable community support while benefiting from its comprehensive dependency visualization capabilities. Despite its strengths, there is room for enhancement in integration with other tools, UI friendliness, and reporting features.

What are Black Duck's key features?

Automated Component Analysis: Offers detailed insights into open-source components.
Vulnerability Scanning: Identifies and addresses potential security issues.
Knowledge Base: Extensive database for informed decision-making.
Policy Management: Comprehensive control over security policies.
Integration: Seamlessly fits into existing DevOps workflows.

What should users look for in ROI?

Security Assurance: Mitigates risks associated with open-source software.
Efficiency: Reduces time spent on manual auditing tasks.
License Compliance: Ensures compliance with open-source licenses.
Risk Management: Enhances operational risk management in software development.

Enterprise environments use Black Duck extensively for security, compliance, and risk management, ensuring software meets regulatory standards and mitigates vulnerabilities. Its implementation in specific industries aids in controlled and secure software development processes, underlining its role in maintaining rigorous security standards while delivering dependable performance.

Black Duck

Up to 90% of any piece of software is from open source, creating countless dependencies and areas of risk to manage. FOSSA is the most reliable automated policy engine for legal teams to maintain license compliance, security to fix vulnerabilities, and engineering to improve code quality across the entire software supply chain. As the only developer-native open source management platform, FOSSA fully integrates with your existing CI/CD pipeline to provide complete visibility and context earlier in the software development lifecycle. For the first time, teams can collaboratively shift left and audit, analyze, control, and remediate license issues and vulnerabilities right in their existing workflows.

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace

AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent