GitGuardian Platform vs VirusTotal comparison

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GitGuardian Platform

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 2, 2025

VirusTotal and GitGuardian Platform compete in enhancing cybersecurity by identifying threats. GitGuardian seems to have the upper hand in development-focused environments due to its real-time code scanning and secret detection capabilities.

Features: VirusTotal aggregates multiple antivirus engines, providing comprehensive threat intelligence, file inspection, and detailed threat analysis. It specializes in detecting malicious files, URLs, and integrates with over 70 antivirus scanners. GitGuardian Platform offers real-time scanning of codebases for secret detection, supports CI/CD integrations, and provides automated remediation processes. It detects sensitive information leaks, minimizing security violations, with a low false-positive rate.

Room for Improvement: VirusTotal could expand service integrations and enhance dark web scanning capabilities. Improving reporting capabilities and reducing false positives are also areas for growth. GitGuardian can refine the handling of false positives in test environments, improve user interface customization, and develop features for better large repository handling. There could also be enhancements in the filtering mechanisms to ignore non-critical detections.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: VirusTotal has a straightforward web interface requiring minimal setup, suitable for quick threat assessments. GitGuardian Platform, with its integration into development tools and strong support, offers ease of deployment and is tailored for continuous software development environments. GitGuardian's support is robust, aiding in deployment challenges more efficiently.

Pricing and ROI: VirusTotal is appealing for budget-conscious users as it is free, providing quick threat assessments without extensive costs. However, GitGuardian’s subscription model reflects its extensive features and higher ROI for environments requiring ongoing code security, offering long-term value through comprehensive protection.

To learn more, read our detailed GitGuardian Platform vs. VirusTotal Report (Updated: December 2025).

GitGuardian Platform vs. VirusTotal

December 2025

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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

GitGuardian Platform

Ranking in Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)

5th

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (8th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Data Loss Prevention (DLP) (8th), Software Supply Chain Security (5th), DevSecOps (4th), Non-Human Identity Management (NHIM) (2nd)

VirusTotal

Ranking in Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)

3rd

Average Rating

8.8

Reviews Sentiment

7.3

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Anti-Malware Tools (4th)

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) category, the mindshare of GitGuardian Platform is 1.1%, up from 0.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of VirusTotal is 3.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP) Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
VirusTotal	3.9%
GitGuardian Platform	1.1%
Other	95.0%

Threat Intelligence Platforms (TIP)

Featured Reviews

Ney Roman

DevOps Engineer at Deuna App

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.

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Chinmay Banerjee

Advisor Adtech/Martech/API product/project Engineering at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Helps businesses collect threat data while keeping privacy in mind and apable of detecting, blocking, and removing viruses and malware

There are two gray areas I still need to explore. I have worked with VirusTotal because it easily integrates with over seventy antivirus scanners and blacklisting services. In addition to those there is much scope to improve and add other services or integrations. The areas for improvement are that VirusTotal is not using much AI or generative AI models, while other competitors are starting to build them. For example, VirusTotal's work is based on the setup done by their engineers. If you want to do scanning or protection activities for a specific site, app, or device, that is the area VirusTotal is currently focused on. But other competitors are building AI models that can do things like left-side scanning and provide auto-generated reports. VirusTotal has predefined reports, but there is a lot of manual effort involved. Secondly, the API is very limited if I want to integrate VirusTotal with other applications. They need to build more connectors and provide support for Webhook connectors for the API. If you can't build your own connector, it's always good to have provisions for Webhook setup connectors across platforms. Thirdly, Kaspersky, a competitor of VirusTotal, is using a methodology called "gatekeeper." A gatekeeper is a security system that protects the inside of a building from outside threats. This is the model Kaspersky is currently using. You have your website set up, but the entire army of VirusTotal or Kaspersky is standing guard, protecting you from the first gate itself. Right now, VirusTotal detects threats from your domain, but it is always better to verify inside the domain and protect it from the first level when people or malware are entering. This first level of protection is lacking in VirusTotal right now. The security bridge and protection gate are missing.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The stability of the GitGuardian Platform is excellent."

"What I appreciate the most about GitGuardian Platform is its efficiency when triggering our pipeline and notifying us if secrets have been exposed, such as APIs, variables, our database, or anything being exposed."

"It actually creates an incident ticket for us. We can now go end-to-end after a secret has been identified, to track down who owns the repository and who is responsible for cleaning it up."

"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."

"It's fantastic. We have checked a couple of other vendors and seen their results, which are quite inferior to the amount of detail that the GitGuardian Platform provides. With instantaneous notifications connected to our Slack platform, it allows us to deal quickly with incidents."

"GitGuardian has pretty broad detection capabilities. It covers all of the types of secrets that we've been interested in... [Yet] The "detector" concept, which identifies particular categories or types of secrets, allows an organization to tweak and tailor the configuration for things that are specific to its environment. This is highly useful if you're particularly worried about a certain type of secret and it can help focus attention, as part of early remediation efforts."

"My impression of the GitGuardian Platform's capability to detect secrets in real time has been really amazing, because it lets us protect or block the pipelines in which we deploy new applications so we can acknowledge when a secret is hardcoded in a repository, or when we have already hardcoded secrets within templates in our repos."

"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."

More GitGuardian Platform pros

"It gives detailed information about suspicious IPs, which is one of its most valuable features."

"It is quite simple for anyone if they just want to check some suspicious URLs."

"With VirusTotal, I can check for any hash, malware, file, domain, IP URL, or malicious URL, and Kaspersky stays clean."

"It allows us to see if there have been previous reports on certain indicators of compromise, providing insights from other security professionals."

"It provides detailed insights into possible malicious behavior, dropped files, and TCP connections."

"The initial setup is easy."

"I have never had any problems with stability or bugs while using VirusTotal."

"VirusTotal provides 95% to 98% accurate information."

More VirusTotal pros

Cons

"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."

"I would like to see improvement in some of the user interface features... When one secret is leaked in multiple files or multiple repositories, it will appear on the dashboard. But when you click on that secret, all the occurrences will appear on the page. It would be better to have one secret per occurrence, directly, so that we don't have to click to get to the list of all the occurrences."

"An area for improvement is the front end for incidents. The user experience in this area could be much better."

"It took us a while to get new patterns introduced into the pattern reporting process."

"Automated Jira tickets would be fantastic. At the moment, I believe we have to go in and click to create a Jira ticket. It would be nice to automate."

"They could give a developer access to a dashboard for their team's repositories that just shows their repository secrets. I think more could be exposed to developers."

"One of our current challenges is that the GitGuardian platform identifies encrypted secrets and statements as sensitive information even though they're secured."

"The analytics in GitGuardian Platform have a significant opportunity to better reflect the value provided to security teams and demonstrate actual activity occurring."

More GitGuardian Platform cons

"VirusTotal has different versions, and sometimes the parameters of the API are not very clear."

"I would like to see improvements in the score consistency and accuracy."

"VirusTotal has predefined reports, but there is a lot of manual effort involved."

"They can improve the telemetry. Whenever we handle a sample, they cannot provide any information about a victim."

"VirusTotal is hard to understand because you need to know Google Docs to create queries, and it doesn't have documentation for that."

"There is room for improvement, particularly in making some of the most useful features more accessible in the non-paid version."

"VirusTotal needs better advertisement and promotion, especially in the Middle East, since it is not yet widely recognized or popular in that region."

"I would like to see improvements in the score consistency and accuracy."

More VirusTotal cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We don't have a huge number of users, but its yearly rate was quite reasonable when compared to other per-seat solutions that we looked at... Having a free plan for a small number of users was really great. If you're a small team, I don't see why you wouldn't want to get started with it."

"I am only aware of the base price. I do not know what happened with our purchasing team in discussions with GitGuardian. I was not privy to the overall contract, but in terms of the base MSRP price, I found it reasonable."

"I compared the solution to a couple of other solutions, and I think it is very competitively priced."

"With GitGuardian, we didn't need any middlemen."

"We have seen a return on investment. The amount of time that we would have spent manually doing this definitely outpaces the cost of GitGuardian. It is saving us about $35,000 a year, so I would say the ROI is about $20,000 a year."

"It's fairly priced, as it performs a lot of analysis and is a valuable tool."

"It's a bit expensive, but it works well. You get what you pay for."

"The pricing and licensing are fair. It isn't very expensive and it's good value."

More GitGuardian Platform pricing and cost advice

"The pricing is reasonable."

"We are using VirusTotal with free licenses, managing the license limits across three or four accounts, thus incurring no costs."

"The pricing is very economical."

"VirusTotal is an expensive solution."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Government

16%

Computer Software Company

11%

Comms Service Provider

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Computer Software Company

14%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Comms Service Provider

University

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	10
Midsize Enterprise	9
Large Enterprise	13

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	4
Midsize Enterprise	2
Large Enterprise	5

Questions from the Community

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...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for VirusTotal?

I do not know about the pricing or licensing as our organization services VirusTotal for our clients.

What needs improvement with VirusTotal?

I would like to see improvements in the score consistency and accuracy. VirusTotal should add more details like those from competitors such as URL Void or Symantec URL Checker, which show the categ...

What is your primary use case for VirusTotal?

As I work in an incident response role, my daily task is to mitigate the security alert and perform the analysis part. When any alerts come, I check the IPs from where they originate and the locati...

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Product Reports

Download GitGuardian Platform product report

GitGuardian Platform

January 2026

Download VirusTotal product report

Anti-Malware Tools

January 2026

Also Known As

GitGuardian Internal Monitoring, GitGuardian Public Monitoring

No data available

Interactive Demo

GitGuardian

Demo not available

Overview

GitGuardian is a comprehensive platform focused on enhancing Non-Human Identity security by integrating Secrets Security and Secrets Observability to detect and manage secrets across development environments.

As cybersecurity threats increasingly target NHIs like service accounts and applications, GitGuardian offers a robust solution by supporting over 450 types of secrets and deploying honeytokens for additional defense. Trusted by leading organizations and developers, its monitoring and quick alert system enable effective detection and management of sensitive data, strengthening operational security across platforms.

What are the key features of GitGuardian?

Secrets Detection: Identifies various secrets types such as AWS keys and passwords.
Quick Alerts: Provides timely notifications for immediate risk management.
Integration: Seamlessly integrates with development tools and workflows.
Dev in the Loop: Facilitates rapid issue resolution.
Historical Scanning: Enhances security through thorough scanning practices.

What benefits and ROI should companies consider?

Efficiency: Streamlined remediation processes with minimal false positives.
Customizability: Adaptable detection features cater to specific needs.
Risk Reduction: Proactive management of sensitive data threats.
Team Integration: Improved collaboration through connected workflows.
Development Continuity: Maintains seamless operation during security processes.

In the tech industry, GitGuardian is employed to safeguard APIs and sensitive credentials across code repositories like GitHub. Companies benefit from instant alerts and integrations with tools like Slack, effectively managing risks and enhancing security policies. While popular in sectors dependent on development agility, there is room for further improvement in customization and integration to meet specific industry needs.

GitGuardian

VirusTotal provides a comprehensive digital security platform by leveraging a vast malware database. It integrates numerous antivirus scanners for robust malware and virus detection, offering valuable insights for threat intelligence and security analysis.

VirusTotal is widely used for malware analysis and cybersecurity investigations, relying on its extensive capabilities in file and IP analysis. It integrates seamlessly with various antivirus engines, ensuring detailed threat intelligence. The platform excels at performing automated reputation checks, gleaning insights from a robust community, and delivering comprehensive information on suspicious activities. With an API system, it facilitates deeper analysis and integration into existing security workflows.

What are the standout features of VirusTotal?

Vast Malware Database: A comprehensive repository for malware intelligence.
Integration with Antivirus Scanners: Collaborates with multiple scanners for enhanced detection.
File and IP Analysis: Detailed insights into files and IP addresses.
Automated Reputation Checks: Efficiently verifies file and domain safety.
Community Insights: Gathers valuable data from an active community.

What benefits and ROI should be considered?

Threat Intelligence: Informs strategic security decisions with detailed malware data.
Enhanced Detection: Supports comprehensive threat identification and response.
Contextual Analysis: Provides extensive details for thorough investigation of threats.

In sectors like retail, FinTech, and GRC, VirusTotal is integrated into cybersecurity workflows to enhance incident response capabilities. It is invaluable for analyzing phishing websites, inspecting URLs, identifying compromised information, and generating alerts for specific threats. APIs enable deeper examination of suspicious activity, supporting comprehensive cybersecurity operations.

Sample Customers

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.

Information Not Available