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Fortify Application Defender vs GitGuardian Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 28, 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

Fortify Application Defender
Ranking in Application Security Tools
25th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitGuardian Platform
Ranking in Application Security Tools
9th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
32
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (6th), Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) (5th), Software Supply Chain Security (6th), DevSecOps (3rd), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (3rd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Fortify Application Defender is 0.8%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitGuardian Platform is 0.9%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
GitGuardian Platform0.9%
Fortify Application Defender0.8%
Other98.3%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Saroj-Patnaik - PeerSpot reviewer
Reliable solution with excellent machine learning algorithms but expensive and lacking support
I primarily use Fortify Application Defender to assess whether our products can defend against applications Fortify Application Defender's most valuable features are machine learning algorithms, real-time remediation, and automatic vulnerability notifications. Fortify Application Defender gives…
Ney Roman - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates efficient secret management and improves development processes
Regarding the exceptions in GitGuardian Platform, we know that within the platform we have a way to accept a path or a directory from a repository, but it is not that visible at the very beginning. You have to figure out where to search for it, and once you have it, it is really good, but it is not that visible at the beginning. This should be made more exposed. The documentation could be better because it was not that comprehensively documented. When we started working with GitGuardian Platform, it was difficult to find some specific use cases, and we were not aware of that. It might have improved now, but at that time, it was not something we would recommend.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy."
"We are able to provide out customers with a secure application after development. They are no longer left wondering if they are vulnerable to different threats within the market following deployment."
"The most valuable features of Fortify Application Defender are the code packages that are default."
"The tool's most valuable feature is software composition analysis. This feature works well with my .NET applications, providing a better understanding of library vulnerabilities."
"The most valuable feature is that it analyzes data in real-time."
"The information from Fortify Application Defender on how to fix and solve issues is very good compared to other solutions."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to automatically feed it rules what it's coupled with the WebInspect dynamic application scanning technology."
"The solution helped us to improve the code quality of our organization."
"The most valuable feature is the alerts when secrets are leaked and we can look at particular repositories to see if there are any outstanding problems. In addition, the solution's detection capabilities seem very broad. We have no concerns there."
"GitGuardian Platform has helped save significant time for the security team by eliminating the need to seek out development teams and work with them on exposed secrets, as much of this is now handled proactively."
"GitGuardian has also helped us develop a security-minded culture. We're serious about shift left and getting better about code security. I think a lot of people are getting more mindful about what a secret is."
"The most valuable feature is the general incident reporting system."
"The newest addition that we appreciate about GitGuardian Platform is the ability to create a custom detector, which we built and worked with the team, and that works very effectively."
"We have definitely seen a return on investment when it finds things that are real. We have caught a couple things before they made it to production, and had they made it to production, that would have been dangerous."
"Presently, we find the pre-commit hooks more useful."
"The most valuable feature is its ability to automate both downloading the repository and generating a Software Bill of Materials directly from it."
 

Cons

"The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and security checks. Many independent and open-source tools are available, from Apache to various libraries. Using multiple DevOps pipeline tools can slow the turnaround time."
"Fortify Application Defender gives a lot of false positives."
"I encountered many false positives for Python applications."
"The licensing can be a little complex."
"The biggest complaint that I have heard concerns additional platform support because right now, it only supports applications that are written in .NET and Java."
"Fortify Application Defender could improve by supporting more code languages, such as GRAAS and Groovy."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The false positive rate should be lower."
"One improvement that I'd like to see is a cleaner for Splunk logs. It would be nice to have a middle man for anything we send or receive from Splunk forwarders. I'd love to see it get cleaned by GitGuardian or caught to make sure we don't have any secrets getting committed to Splunk logs."
"I would like to see more fine-grained access controls when tickets are assigned for incidents. I would like the ability to provide more controls to the team leads or the product managers so that they can drive what we, the AppSec team, are doing."
"I'm excited about the possibility of Public Postman scanning being integrated with GitGuardian in the future. Additionally, I'm interested in exploring the potential use of honeytokens, which seems like a compelling approach to lure and identify attackers."
"The main thing for me is the customization for some of the healthcare-specific identifiers that we want to validate. There should be some ability, which is coming in the near future, to have custom identifiers. Being in healthcare, we have pretty specific patterns that we need to match for PHI or PII. Having that would add a little bit extra to it."
"Other solutions have a live chat feature that provides instant results. Waiting for an agent to reply to an email is less ideal than an instant conversation with a support employee. That's a complaint so minor I almost hesitate to mention it."
"There is room for improvement in its integration for bug-tracking. It should be more direct. They have invested a lot in user management, but they need to invest in integrations. That is a real lack."
"GitGuardian's hook and dashboard scanners are the two entities. They should work together as one. We've seen several discrepancies where the hook is not being flagged on the dashboard. I still think they need to do some fine-tuning around that. We don't want to waste time."
"GitGuardian could have more detailed information on what software engineers can do. It only provides some highly generic feedback when a secret is detected. They should have outside documentation. We send this to our software engineers, who are still doing the commits. It's the wrong way to work, but they are accustomed to doing it this way. When they go into that ticket, they see a few instructions that might be confusing. If I see a leaked secret committed two years ago, it's not enough to undo that commit. I need to go in there, change all my code to utilize GitHub secrets, and go on AWS to validate my key."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the solution's pricing a five out of ten. It comes as an annual cloud subscription. The tool's pricing is around 50 lakhs."
"Fortify Application Defender is very expensive."
"The product’s price is much higher than other tools."
"The base licensing costs for the SaaS platform is about $900 USD per application, per year."
"The licensing is very complex, it's project based and can range from $10,000 to $200,000+ depending on the project type and size."
"The price of this solution could be less expensive."
"It's competitively priced compared to others. Overall, the secret detection sector is expensive, but we are very happy with the value we get."
"GitGuardian is on the pricier side."
"It's a little bit expensive."
"It could be cheaper. When GitHub secrets monitoring solution goes to general access and general availability, GitGuardian might be in a little bit of trouble from the competition, and maybe then they might lower their prices. The GitGuardian solution is great. I'm just concerned that they're not GitHub."
"With GitGuardian, we didn't need any middlemen."
"It's fairly priced, as it performs a lot of analysis and is a valuable tool."
"The pricing is reasonable. GitGuardian is one of the most recent security tools we've adopted. When it came time to renew it, there was no doubt about it. It is licensed per developer, so it scales nicely with the number of repos that we have. We can create new repositories and break up work. It isn't scaling based on the amount of data it's consuming."
"The internal side is cheap per user. It is annual pricing based on the number of users."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
9%
Government
19%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise9
Large Enterprise13
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Fortify Application Defender?
I find the configuration of rules in Fortify Application Defender useful. Its integration is also easy.
What needs improvement with Fortify Application Defender?
The product should integrate industry-standard code review tools internally with its system. This would streamline the coding process, as developers wouldn't need multiple tools for code review and...
What is your primary use case for Fortify Application Defender?
We use the solution for fast code review. It is integrated into our DevOps pipeline.
What do you like most about GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
It's also worth mentioning that GitGuardian is unique because they have a free tier that we've been using for the first twelve months. It provides full functionality for smaller teams. We're a smal...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
It's competitively priced compared to others. Overall, the secret detection sector is expensive, but we are happy with the value we get.
What needs improvement with GitGuardian Internal Monitoring ?
GitGuardian Platform does what it is designed to do, but it still generates many false positives. We utilize the automated playbooks from GitGuardian Platform, and we are enhancing them. We will pr...
 

Also Known As

HPE Fortify Application Defender, Micro Focus Fortify Application Defender
GitGuardian Internal Monitoring, GitGuardian Public Monitoring
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ServiceMaster, Saltworks, SAP
Widely adopted by developer communities, GitGuardian is used by over 600 thousand developers and leading companies, including Snowflake, Orange, Iress, Mirantis, Maven Wave, ING, BASF, and Bouygues Telecom.
Find out what your peers are saying about Fortify Application Defender vs. GitGuardian Platform and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.