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14,882 views|10,384 comparisons
85% willing to recommend
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Read 41 Snyk reviews
12,032 views|8,523 comparisons
100% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on May 22, 2022

We performed a comparison between Black Duck and Snyk based on our users’ reviews in five categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: While some Black Duck reviewers report the initial setup to be straightforward, others feel that the setup can be complex. Snyk users say the initial setup is straightforward and easy.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their ease-of-use, stability, and scalability. Black Duck reviewers like its vulnerability scanning abilities but say its analytics need to improve. Snyk users say it integrates well, has a good interface, and significantly reduces vulnerabilities. A couple of Snyk users mention that they would like improved reporting visibility.
  • Pricing: Most Black Duck users feel it is an expensive product, whereas most Snyk users say it is reasonably priced.

  • ROI: Black Duck reviewers do not mention ROI. Snyk users report a significant ROI.
  • Service and Support: Some Black Duck users are satisfied with the support they receive, while others write that the support’s response time is slow. Snyk users report being very satisfied with the level of support they receive.

Comparison Results: Snyk is the clear winner in this comparison. It is easy to deploy, secure, and powerful. In addition, it has excellent customer support and an impressive ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Black Duck vs. Snyk Report (Updated: March 2024).
768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"The solution works well on Mac products.""The solution is stable.""It is able to drill down to the source level.""The solution is very good at scanning and evaluating open source software.""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 stability is okay.""Policy management is a valuable feature.""It highlights what the developers have done, and it shows the impact from an intellectual property point of view."

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"What is valuable about Snyk is its simplicity.""Snyk has given us really good results because it is fully automated. We don't have to scan projects every time to find vulnerabilities, as it already stores the dependencies that we are using. It monitors 24/7 to find out if there are any issues that have been reported out on the Internet.""There are many valuable features. For example, the way the scanning feature works. The integration is cool because I can integrate it and I don't need to wait until the CACD, I can plug it in to our local ID, and there I can do the scanning. That is the part I like best.""We have integrated it into our software development environment. We have it in a couple different spots. Developers can use it at the point when they are developing. They can test it on their local machine. If the setup that they have is producing alerts or if they need to upgrade or patch, then at the testing phase when a product is being built for automated testing integrates with Snyk at that point and also produces some checks.""It has a nice dashboard where I can see all the vulnerabilities and risks that they provided. I can also see the category of any risk, such as medium, high, and low. They provide the input priority-wise. The team can target the highest one first, and then they can go to medium and low ones.""The most valuable features of Snyk are vulnerability scanning and automation. The automation the solution brings around vulnerability scanning is useful.""I am impressed with the product's security vulnerability detection. My peers in security are praising the tool for its accuracy to detect security vulnerabilities. The product is very easy to onboard. It doesn't require a lot of preparation or prerequisites. It's a bit of a plug-and-play as long as you're using a package manager or for example, you are using a GitHub repository. And that is an advantage for this tool because developers don't want to add more tools to what they're currently using.""I find SCA to be valuable. It can read your libraries, your license and bring the best way to resolve your problem in the best scenario."

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Cons
"The tool needs to improve its pricing. Its configuration is complex and can be improved.""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 solution must provide more open APIs.""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.""It needs to be more user-friendly for developers and in general, to ensure compliance.""The product's pricing is higher compared to other competitor products.""The documentation is quite scattered.""Black Duck can improve the time it takes for a scan. Most of the time it's not ideal when integrated with the live DevSecOps pipeline. We have to create a separate job to scan the library because it takes a couple of hours to scan all those libraries. The scanning could be faster."

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"Because Snyk has so many integrations and so many things it can do, it's hard to really understand all of them and to get that information to each team that needs it... If there were more self-service, perhaps tutorials or overviews for new teams or developers, so that they could click through and see things themselves, that would help.""I think Snyk should add more of a vulnerability protection feature in the tool since it is an area where it lacks.""The tool needs improvement in license compliance. I would like to see the integration of better policy management in the product's future release. When it comes to the organization that I work for, there are a lot of business units since we are a group of companies. Each of these companies has its specific requirements and its own appetite for risk. This should be able to reflect in flexible policies. We need to be able to configure policies that can be adjusted later or overridden by the business unit that is using the product.""The solution's reporting and storage could be improved.""We were using Microsoft Docker images. It was reporting some vulnerabilities, but we were not able to figure out the fix for them. It was reporting some vulnerabilities in the Docker images given by Microsoft, which were out of our control. That was the only limitation. Otherwise, it was good.""Compatibility with other products would be great.""DAST has shortcomings, and Snyk needs to improve and overcome such shortcomings.""We've also had technical issues with blocking newly introduced vulnerabilities in PRs and that was creating a lot of extra work for developers in trying to close and reopen the PR to get rid of some areas. We ended up having to disable that feature altogether because it wasn't really working for us and it was actually slowing down developer velocity."

More Snyk Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Depending on the use case, the cost could range from $10,000 USD to $70,000 USD."
  • "The price is quite high because the behavior of the software during the scan is similar to competing products."
  • "The price is low. It's not an expensive solution."
  • "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."
  • "It is expensive."
  • "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 pricing is a little high."
  • More Black Duck Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "It's inexpensive and easy to license. It comes in standard package sizing, which is straightforward. This information is publicly found on their website."
  • "We do have some missing licenses issues, especially with non-SPDX compliant one, but we expect this to be fixed soon"
  • "You can get a good deal with Snyk for pricing. It's a little expensive, but it is worth it."
  • "Their licensing model is fairly robust and scalable for our needs. I believe we have reached a reasonable agreement on the licensing to enable hundreds of developers to participate in this product offering. The solution is very tailored towards developers and its licensing model works well for us."
  • "The price is good. Snyk had a good price compared to the competition, who had higher pricing than them. Also, their licensing and billing are clear."
  • "It's good value. That's the primary thing. It's not cheap-cheap, but it's good value."
  • "With Snyk, you get what you pay for. It is not a cheap solution, but you get a comprehensiveness and level of coverage that is very good. The dollars in the security budget only go so far. If I can maximize my value and be able to have some funds left over for other initiatives, I want to do that. That is what drives me to continue to say, "What's out there in the market? Snyk's expensive, but it's good. Is there something as good, but more affordable?" Ultimately, I find we could go cheaper, but we would lose the completeness of vision or scope. I am not willing to do that because Snyk does provide a pretty important benefit for us."
  • "Snyk is a premium-priced product, so it's kind of expensive. The big con that I find frustrating is when a company charges extra for single sign-on (SSO) into their SaaS app. Snyk is one of the few that I'm willing to pay that add-on charge, but generally I disqualify products that charge an extra fee to do integrated authentication to our identity provider, like Okta or some other SSO. That is a big negative. We had to pay extra for that. That little annoyance aside, it is expensive. You get a lot out of it, but you're paying for that premium."
  • More Snyk Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The product enables other applications to be secure.
    Top Answer:The pricing is a little high. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten. The average price of the product is close to $100.
    Top Answer:Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to find any issues reported on the internet. It will store dependencies that you are… more »
    Top Answer:The most effective feature in securing project dependencies stems from its ability to highlight security vulnerabilities.
    Top Answer:I don't use Snyk anymore. The tool is just used in our company, but not by me anymore. It is important that the solution has the ability to match up with the OWASP Top 10 list, especially considering… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    14,882
    Comparisons
    10,384
    Reviews
    7
    Average Words per Review
    373
    Rating
    8.1
    Views
    12,032
    Comparisons
    8,523
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    549
    Rating
    7.8
    Comparisons
    JFrog Xray logo
    Compared 11% of the time.
    Mend.io logo
    Compared 9% of the time.
    FOSSA logo
    Compared 8% of the time.
    Sonatype Lifecycle logo
    Compared 6% of the time.
    SonarQube logo
    Compared 17% of the time.
    Veracode logo
    Compared 6% of the time.
    GitHub Advanced Security logo
    Compared 6% of the time.
    Checkmarx One logo
    Compared 4% of the time.
    Also Known As
    Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
    Learn More
    Overview

    Black Duck is a comprehensive solution for managing security, license compliance, and code quality risks that come from the use of open source in applications and containers. Named a leader in software composition analysis (SCA) by Forrester, Black Duck gives you unmatched visibility into third-party code, enabling you to control it across your software supply chain and throughout the application life cycle.

    Snyk is a user-friendly security solution that enables users to safely develop and use open source code. Users can create automatic scans that allow them to keep a close eye on their code and prevent bad actors from exploiting vulnerabilities. This enables users to find and remove vulnerabilities soon after they appear.

    Benefits of Snyk

    Some of the benefits of using Snyk include:

    • Conserves resources: Snyk easily integrates with other security solutions and uses their security features to ensure that the work that users are doing is completely secure. These integrations allow them to protect themselves without pulling resources from their continued integration or continued delivery workflows. Resources can be conserved for areas of the greatest need.
    • Highly flexible: Snyk enables users to customize the system’s security automation features to meet their needs. Users can guarantee that the automation performs the functions that are most essential for their current project. Additionally, users are able to maintain platform governance consistency across their system.
    • Keeps users ahead of emerging threats. Snyk employs a database of threats that help it detect and keep track of potential issues. This database is constantly being updated to reflect the changes that take place in the realm of cybersecurity. It also uses machine learning. Users are prepared to deal with new issues as they arise.
    • Automatically scans projects for threats. Snyk’s command-line interface enables users to schedule the solution to run automatic scans of their projects. Time and manpower can be conserved for the areas of greatest need without sacrificing security.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Snyk is a security platform for developers that stands out among its competitors for a number of reasons. Two major ones are its ability to integrate with other security solutions and important insights that it can enable users to discover. Snyk enables users to combine its already existing security features with those of other solutions to create far more robust and flexible layers of security than what it can supply on its own. It gives users the ability to dig into the security issues that they may experience. Users are given a clear view of the root causes of these problems. This equips them to address the problem and prevent similar issues in the future.

    Cameron G., a security software engineer at a tech company, writes, “The most valuable features are their GitLab and JIRA integrations.The GitLab integration lets us pull projects in pretty easily, so that it's pretty minimal for developers to get it set up. Using the JIRA integration, it's also pretty easy to get the information that is generated, as a result of that GitLab integration, back to our teams in a non-intrusive way and in a workflow that we are already using. Snyk is something of a bridge that we use; we get our projects into it and then get the information out of it. Those two integrations are crucial for us to be able to do that pretty simply.”

    Sean M., the chief information security officer of a technology vendor, writes, "From the software composition analysis perspective, it first makes sure that we understand what is happening from a third-party perspective for the particular product that we use. This is very difficult when you are building software and incorporating dependencies from other libraries, because those dependencies have dependencies and that chain of dependencies can go pretty deep. There could be a vulnerability in something that is seven layers deep, and it would be very difficult to understand that is even affecting us. Therefore, Snyk provides fantastic visibility to know, "Yes, we have a problem. Here is where it ultimately comes from." It may not be with what we're incorporating, but something much deeper than that."

    Sample Customers
    Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, Noser Engineering AG, ClickFox, Dynatrace, CopperLeaf
    StartApp, Segment, Skyscanner, DigitalOcean, Comic Relief
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Manufacturing Company67%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Financial Services Firm17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm21%
    Manufacturing Company15%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Healthcare Company4%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company39%
    Financial Services Firm22%
    Individual & Family Service6%
    Comms Service Provider6%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company15%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Manufacturing Company8%
    Insurance Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business32%
    Large Enterprise68%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business15%
    Midsize Enterprise10%
    Large Enterprise75%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business44%
    Midsize Enterprise22%
    Large Enterprise34%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business21%
    Midsize Enterprise14%
    Large Enterprise64%
    Buyer's Guide
    Black Duck vs. Snyk
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. Snyk and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    768,740 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Black Duck is ranked 1st in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 16 reviews while Snyk is ranked 2nd in Software Composition Analysis (SCA) with 41 reviews. Black Duck is rated 7.8, while Snyk is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Black Duck writes "Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Snyk writes "Performs software composition analysis (SCA) similar to other expensive tools". Black Duck is most compared with Fortify Static Code Analyzer, JFrog Xray, Mend.io, FOSSA and Sonatype Lifecycle, whereas Snyk is most compared with SonarQube, Fortify Static Code Analyzer, Veracode, GitHub Advanced Security and Checkmarx One. See our Black Duck vs. Snyk report.

    See our list of best Software Composition Analysis (SCA) vendors.

    We monitor all Software Composition Analysis (SCA) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.