Softwr

Government · head to head

Bonfire vs Syft

Bonfire logo

Bonfire

Government

Public sector sourcing and bid evaluation software with scored, auditable award decisions

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Syft logo

Syft

Cybersecurity

Generates a software bill of materials from images, filesystems and archives

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Syft has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Bonfire it is a sourcing and evaluation tool rather than full procure to pay, so requisitions, purchase orders and invoicing stay in the finance system and the join between them is the agency's problem.; Syft lockfile parsing can drop packages silently. An open issue filed in August 2026 reports the yarn v1 cataloguer returning 118 of 745 packages with no error raised, which means a complete bill of materials and an 84 percent incomplete one look identical to the caller.
  • They diverge on capability: Bonfire covers Solicitation posting, Syft covers Multi-format output.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Bonfire and Syft actually diverge.

Attributes where Bonfire and Syft differ
AttributeBonfireSyft
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelquoteOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWebmacOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Bonfire

  • Solicitation posting
  • Sealed submission intake
  • Scored evaluation workspace
  • Audit trail
  • Supplier portal
  • Requirement matrices

Only in Syft

  • Multi-format output
  • Broad ecosystem coverage
  • Binary classifiers
  • In-toto attestations
  • Library and CLI
  • Pairs with Grype

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Bonfire

  • An agency that has lost or nearly lost a bid protest and needs a defensible evaluation recordnot Syft
  • A procurement team running scoring committees currently held together by spreadsheets and emailnot Syft
  • A university or health system applying public procurement rules without a public procurement systemnot Syft
  • An agency wanting suppliers to self register and receive addenda automatically rather than by mailing listnot Syft

Syft

  • Producing a bill of materials for a customer or regulator that requires onenot Bonfire
  • Feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directlynot Bonfire
  • Recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quicklynot Bonfire
  • Public sector work where an SBOM is a contractual deliverablenot Bonfire

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Bonfire

  • It is a sourcing and evaluation tool rather than full procure to pay, so requisitions, purchase orders and invoicing stay in the finance system and the join between them is the agency's problem.
  • Since the acquisition path from GTY to GI Partners to Euna Solutions, Bonfire sits in a portfolio alongside products it once competed with, which narrows a shortlist that appears independent.
  • Suppliers must register on the portal to bid, and small local vendors reliably complain about the extra account, which can reduce responses on low value solicitations.
  • Pricing is quoted rather than published and scales with solicitation volume, so an agency with a few very large procurements pays a model designed around throughput.
  • Contract management after award is thin compared with dedicated contract lifecycle products, so agencies often buy a second system for the obligations the award created.

Syft

  • Lockfile parsing can drop packages silently. An open issue filed in August 2026 reports the yarn v1 cataloguer returning 118 of 745 packages with no error raised, which means a complete bill of materials and an 84 percent incomplete one look identical to the caller.
  • Fidelity varies sharply by ecosystem. Conan for C and C++, Haskell and Terraform get cataloguer support with no licence data, no dependency relationships and no file ownership, so a C and C++ shop gets the least from it.
  • Binary classification yields no licence or dependency metadata, and vendored or statically linked code is exactly where supply chain risk hides, so the blind spot and the risk overlap.
  • Incorrect CPE values and CPE collisions are recorded as open issues, and since Grype matches on CPE and PURL, an inventory error becomes a false negative in the security report downstream.
  • An inventory is not a risk assessment. Even a perfect bill of materials says a vulnerable version is present, never that the vulnerable function is called, and the triage burden lands entirely on the reader.

Pricing, plan by plan

Bonfire

On request
  • Bonfire$undefined/year
    • Quoted by agency size and annual solicitation volume
    • Supplier side registration is free, which is how the vendor network grows
    • Implementation and training quoted separately from subscription

Syft

Free
  • SyftFree
    • Apache-2.0
    • No usage limits
    • Community support
  • Anchore Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Policy enforcement and reporting
    • Federal and commercial tiers
    • Pricing not published, quoted on request

Which should you pick?

Choose Bonfire if

  • You need solicitation posting.
  • You also want sealed submission intake.
Bonfire review

Choose Syft if

  • You need multi-format output.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
  • You also want broad ecosystem coverage.
Syft review

Questions people ask

Is Bonfire or Syft better?
Neither clearly leads. Bonfire starts at On request and Syft at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Bonfire or Syft?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Bonfire and Free for Syft.
Does Bonfire or Syft run on more platforms?
Bonfire runs on Web. Syft runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
Can I use Syft for free?
Yes. Syft has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Bonfire starts at On request.
What is Bonfire best used for?
Bonfire is most often used for an agency that has lost or nearly lost a bid protest and needs a defensible evaluation record, a procurement team running scoring committees currently held together by spreadsheets and email, a university or health system applying public procurement rules without a public procurement system, an agency wanting suppliers to self register and receive addenda automatically rather than by mailing list. Of those, an agency that has lost or nearly lost a bid protest and needs a defensible evaluation record and a procurement team running scoring committees currently held together by spreadsheets and email are not what Syft is typically brought in for.
What can Bonfire do that Syft cannot?
Bonfire covers Solicitation posting, Sealed submission intake, Scored evaluation workspace, Audit trail. Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Bonfire: Who owns Bonfire?

Euna Solutions. Bonfire was acquired by GTY Technology in 2019, GTY was taken private by GI Partners in 2022, and the portfolio was rebranded Euna Solutions in 2023.

Syft: Does Syft find vulnerabilities?

No. It produces an inventory. Grype, from the same company, matches that inventory against vulnerability feeds. They are separate tools and the distinction is frequently lost.

Bonfire: Is it full procure to pay?

No. It covers sourcing and evaluation through award. Purchase orders and invoicing remain in the finance system.

Syft: Does anything in the Anchore stack do reachability analysis?

No. Neither Syft, Grype nor the commercial Anchore platform performs call graph or reachability analysis, so none of them tells you whether a vulnerable code path is actually invoked.

Bonfire: What is the real value?

A defensible, time stamped evaluation record when an award is protested, which is the expensive failure mode in public procurement.

Syft: Is it a CNCF or OpenSSF project?

No. It is single-vendor open source owned by Anchore, with no foundation governance. That is a different licence risk profile from Sigstore.

Bonfire: Can we see what other agencies pay?

Yes. These contracts are public records. Read several comparable awards before negotiating.

Syft: What does Anchore Enterprise cost?

Not published. The pricing page is contact-sales only, with named but unpriced commercial and federal tiers.

Syft: How do I know my SBOM is complete?

You largely cannot, which is the honest answer. Silent partial parsing is a known open defect, so a bill of materials used for compliance should be spot-checked against a known dependency list.

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