Snyk vs Semgrep
Semgrep is the part of a Snyk replacement that people get wrong, because "Semgrep" names two different products. The Community Edition engine is LGPL-2.1 and free, and per Semgrep's own documentation it analyses within a single function only. Cross-file analysis and the roughly 20,000 proprietary Pro rules are paid. So the axis here is not open versus closed and it is not price: it is which Semgrep you are actually comparing to Snyk Code.
Pick Semgrep if you want to own and write your own rules, your team is under 10 contributors and 10 repositories so the hosted Free Edition covers you, or you want the SAST half of Snyk without the rest of the bundle. Stay on Snyk if you need cross-file taint tracking without paying for it, or if you want dependencies, containers, IaC and code from one vendor with one report.
Side by side
Snyk vs Semgrep at a glance
| Snyk | Semgrep | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence | ✗ proprietary SaaS | ✓ LGPL-2.1 (Community Edition) |
| What the licence counts | Contributing developers, 90-day commit window | Contributors |
| Free tier | 5 projects, 100 Code tests a month | 10 contributors, 10 repos, Code and Supply Chain |
| Entry paid tier | Team from $25 per developer per month | Teams from $30 per contributor per month |
| Products at entry tier | Open Source, Code, IaC and Container together | ✗ pick one of Code, Supply Chain or Secrets |
| Published price above entry | Ignite $1,260 per developer per year | ✗ Enterprise by quote only |
| Analysis depth, free version | Cross-file, hosted only | ✗ single function only in CE |
| Cross-file taint tracking | ✓ included | Paid tiers |
| Write your own rules | Limited | ✓ YAML patterns that look like the code |
| Community rules | Vendor ruleset only | ✓ 3,000-plus, 30-plus languages |
| Run fully offline | ✗ | ✓ CE binary in your own CI |
| Dependency scanning | ✓ Open Source | ✓ Supply Chain, separate product on Teams |
| Containers and IaC | ✓ | ✗ not its scope |
| Automatic fix pull requests | ✓ | Autofix on supported rules |
| Best for | Four scan types under one contract | Owning your SAST rules, small teams on the free tier |
Sources: Snyk plans · Semgrep pricing · Semgrep on CE versus Pro · Semgrep on GitHub. Compiled August 2026.
Where Semgrep wins
You can write the rule that catches your own bug
Semgrep rules are YAML patterns that look like the code they match, so a security engineer can encode "never call this internal helper without the tenant check" in an afternoon and gate it in CI. This is the thing Snyk structurally cannot offer, because its value is a curated ruleset it maintains for you. Teams with a house framework and house mistakes get more from ten local rules than from a thousand generic ones.
The free tier is a real free tier for a small team
Hosted Free Edition covers 10 contributors and 10 repositories with both Code and Supply Chain, and the CE binary itself is unlimited in your own CI. Compare that to Snyk Free, which is 5 projects with 100 Code tests a month, a cap a busy repository can spend in a week of pull requests. For a startup under ten committers, Semgrep is free where Snyk is a trial.
The engine runs where you tell it to
Community Edition is a binary, LGPL-2.1, with no account required, so code never leaves your infrastructure. That is a short conversation with a security reviewer where a SaaS-only scanner is a long one, and it matters more in regulated environments than any detection-rate comparison.
Semgrep is honest about its own boundary
The single-function limitation is documented on Semgrep's own docs rather than buried, which is worth noting because it lets you evaluate the free tier accurately instead of discovering the gap after migrating. Treat any vendor's detection percentages, Semgrep's included, as vendor claims and run both scanners over your own repository before believing either.
Where Snyk still wins
Cross-file analysis is included, and in Semgrep it is not. Most serious injection findings involve data entering in one file and reaching a sink in another. Semgrep CE will not follow it, by design, so the free comparison is not like-for-like with Snyk Code. Once you pay for Semgrep to get that capability, you are back to a per-contributor meter at $30, slightly above Snyk Team's $25, and picking one product from three rather than getting Code, Open Source, IaC and Container together.
Semgrep replaces one quarter of the surface. No container image scanning, no IaC misconfiguration checks. A full Snyk exit is Semgrep plus Trivy or OSV-Scanner, two tools to install, two report formats to reconcile and two upgrade paths to own. That is entirely doable and often the right answer, but it is not "we swapped Snyk for Semgrep".
And above the entry tier, Semgrep is less transparent, not more. Snyk at least publishes Ignite at $1,260 per developer per year. Semgrep goes from Teams straight to a quote. If your objection to Snyk was not knowing what the next tier costs, Semgrep does not fix it.
Migrating Snyk to Semgrep
The path most teams take:
1. Decide which Semgrep you are testing. Run CE locally first, before touching the hosted tiers, so you learn what single-function analysis does and does not surface on your actual code. Everything else follows from that number.
2. Cover the other three quarters. Add Trivy or OSV-Scanner for dependencies, images and IaC in the same CI job. Do this first, because it is the cheap and unambiguous part of the swap.
3. Run in parallel and diff. Both tools emit SARIF, so point them at the same dashboard and compare findings per repository. Expect Snyk to find cross-file issues CE misses, and expect Semgrep to find framework-specific issues once you add your own rules. Both facts are the point of the exercise.
4. Write three house rules before you decide. Semgrep's value is mostly here, and a team that never writes a custom rule is comparing rulesets rather than tools.
5. What does not move. Snyk's ignore decisions, triage history and its curated fix advice stay behind. Export the ignore list, or the first Semgrep run will resurface everything your team already dismissed and the noise will kill adoption in week one.
Common questions
FAQ: Snyk vs Semgrep
Is Semgrep Community Edition good enough to replace Snyk Code?
For a large class of findings, yes, and Semgrep's own documentation is clear about where it stops. Community Edition is LGPL-2.1 with more than 3,000 community rules across 30-plus languages, and it analyses within a single function only, which Semgrep calls intraprocedural analysis. That catches hardcoded secrets, dangerous API calls and unsafe patterns local to one function. It does not follow tainted data across function or file boundaries, which is exactly the shape of many real injection bugs. So CE is a genuine SAST tool, not a full substitute for a cross-file engine.
What does Semgrep cost compared to Snyk?
Semgrep's hosted Free Edition is $0 for up to 10 contributors and 10 repositories, including Code and Supply Chain. Teams starts at $30 per contributor per month, with 500 private repositories, and you pick one product from Code, Supply Chain or Secrets rather than getting all three. Enterprise is quote-only with unlimited repositories and contributors. Snyk Team starts at $25 per contributing developer per month and Ignite at $1,260 per developer per year. Both meters therefore count people who commit, so the saving depends on tier and product mix rather than on the model being different.
Should I run Semgrep instead of Snyk or alongside it?
Semgrep replaces the static-analysis half of Snyk, not the dependency, container and infrastructure-as-code half. Teams leaving Snyk entirely usually pair Semgrep with Trivy or OSV-Scanner to cover that other half, which costs nothing but is two tools to wire into CI. If you are only unhappy about SAST quality or about writing your own rules, running Semgrep alongside Snyk for a sprint and comparing findings per repository is the cheap way to decide, since both emit SARIF into the same dashboard.