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Cybersecurity · head to head

Mullvad VPN vs Syft

M

Mullvad VPN

Cybersecurity

Privacy-first VPN with one flat price and no email required to sign up

From
$5/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Syft logo

Syft

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Syft has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: Mullvad VPN offers no free trial or free tier, unlike several consumer VPN competitors.; 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: Mullvad VPN covers Flat single pricing, Syft covers Multi-format output.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Mullvad VPN and Syft actually diverge.

Attributes where Mullvad VPN and Syft differ
AttributeMullvad VPNSyft
Starting price$5/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
Platformswindows, mac, linux, ios, androidmacOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
Founded2009Unknown

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

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 Mullvad VPN

  • Flat single pricing
  • Account-number signup
  • Cash and crypto payments
  • WireGuard support
  • Independent audits

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.

Mullvad VPN

  • Paying for a VPN anonymously with cash or cryptocurrencynot Syft
  • Avoiding tiered upsells with a single flat-rate plannot Syft
  • Signing up without providing an email addressnot Syft
  • Verifying a provider's privacy claims via independent auditsnot Syft

Syft

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

Where each one falls short

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

Mullvad VPN

  • Offers no free trial or free tier, unlike several consumer VPN competitors.
  • Lacks a bundled tiered structure, so there is no cheaper limited plan for occasional users.
  • Server network and streaming-unblocking performance is smaller than large mainstream VPN providers.
  • No annual discount, meaning long-term subscribers pay the same monthly rate as short-term users.

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

Mullvad VPN

$5/month
  • Mullvad VPN$5/month
    • Flat rate regardless of subscription length
    • 5 simultaneous devices
    • No email required

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 Mullvad VPN if

  • You need flat single pricing.
  • You work on windows, mac, linux, ios, android.
  • You also want account-number signup.
Mullvad VPN 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 Mullvad VPN or Syft better?
Neither clearly leads. Mullvad VPN starts at $5/month and Syft at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Mullvad VPN or Syft?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $5/month for Mullvad VPN and Free for Syft.
Does Mullvad VPN or Syft run on more platforms?
Mullvad VPN runs on windows, mac, linux, ios, android. 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. Mullvad VPN starts at $5/month.
What is Mullvad VPN best used for?
Mullvad VPN is most often used for paying for a vpn anonymously with cash or cryptocurrency, avoiding tiered upsells with a single flat-rate plan, signing up without providing an email address, verifying a provider's privacy claims via independent audits. Of those, paying for a vpn anonymously with cash or cryptocurrency and avoiding tiered upsells with a single flat-rate plan are not what Syft is typically brought in for.
What can Mullvad VPN do that Syft cannot?
Mullvad VPN covers Flat single pricing, Account-number signup, Cash and crypto payments, WireGuard support. Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

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.

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.

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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