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Black Duck vs JFrog Xray comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
JFrog Xray
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (32nd), Container Security (20th), Software Supply Chain Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 18.6%, down from 22.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JFrog Xray is 10.2%, up from 8.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
Sai Pradeep Koneti - PeerSpot reviewer
Goes deep into the docker files and find out vulnerabilities
When we were trying to get it up and working initially, I found it a bit hard to go through JFrog Xray's documentation and get my error solved. I was facing some issues because we hadn't got a specific license for the tool, but I was able to access it. As a regular user, I regularly saw an error message saying that the license feature was unavailable for my subscription. After a couple of days, I realized I was missing a license. I had to go back to the JFrog Xray team, who provided me with the new license, and then I could complete the setup.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability is okay."
"I like the fact that the product auto analyzes components."
"We accidentally use third-party library APIs, which may not be secure. Our technical team may not have the end time or expertise to figure it out. Black Duck helps us with that and saves us time."
"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."
"Black Duck is pretty extensive in terms of the scan reserves and the vulnerability exposures. From that perspective, I'm happy with it."
"It highlights what the developers have done, and it shows the impact from an intellectual property point of view."
"The solution is stable."
"The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution."
"JFrog Xray's reporting feature has a lot of options in it, including scanning."
"The solution is stable and reliable."
"JFrog Xray shows us a list of vulnerabilities that can impact our code."
"The most valuable features of JFrog Xray are its curation capabilities, its native integration with Artifactory, scanning for vulnerabilities, and license compliance features."
"Good reporting functionalities."
"If multiple dependencies and vulnerabilities are found in a project, JFrog Xray is intelligent enough to tell you which vulnerability to target first."
"The most valuable features of JFrog Xray are its curation capabilities, its native integration with Artifactory, scanning for vulnerabilities, and license compliance features."
"I would say that this solution has helped our organization by allowing us to automate a lot of the processes."
 

Cons

"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."
"The solution must provide more open APIs."
"The product's pricing is higher compared to other competitor products."
"Black Duck does not have the SBOM management part. I would like to see this feature added in the future."
"There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers."
"I would like to see improvements in Black Duck's reporting capabilities."
"It can be cumbersome to use or invalidate open source software because there is a hold time to check requirements or common regulations to ensure compliance."
"The scanner client is limited by the size of software it can handle."
"Reporting is crucial, but it is lacking in the current tool. Every organization seeks specific data points rather than general information. Therefore, we require customized reports from the Xray tool."
"I think that the user interface should be expanded to provide customers with a better dashboard for reviewing their feedback regarding their images and the vulnerabilities that are associated with the images."
"X-ray needs improvement in supporting more than one database, as it currently only supports PostgreSQL."
"Lacks deeper reporting, the ability to compare things."
"JFrog Xray does not have a dashboard."
"The speed of JFrog Xray should improve. Other solutions have better performance."
"JFrog Xray's documentation and error logging could be improved."
"The out-of-the-box PostgreSQL provided is not stable, which is why we are considering enterprise support."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is expensive."
"The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
"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."
"Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
"The pricing is a little high."
"The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
"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."
"The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about JFrog Xray?
JFrog Xray shows us a list of vulnerabilities that can impact our code.
What needs improvement with JFrog Xray?
X-ray needs improvement in supporting more than one database, as it currently only supports PostgreSQL. More support during troubleshooting sessions would also be beneficial.
What is your primary use case for JFrog Xray?
Our primary use case for X-ray includes multiple activities such as security and vulnerability scanning. We already use Black Duck for these purposes, and we are evaluating how JFrog Xray can offer...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
JFrog Security Essentials
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
google, amazon, cisco, netflix, oracle, vmware, facebook
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. JFrog Xray and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
856,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.