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Government · head to head

Periscope Holdings vs Syft

Periscope Holdings logo

Periscope Holdings

Government

Statewide e-procurement systems and supplier networks for large public agencies

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: Periscope Holdings it is scaled and priced for statewide programmes, so a single city or county typically finds both the implementation effort and the cost out of proportion to its needs.; 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: Periscope Holdings covers Sealed bid solicitation, Syft covers Multi-format output.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Periscope Holdings and Syft actually diverge.

Attributes where Periscope Holdings and Syft differ
AttributePeriscope HoldingsSyft
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 Periscope Holdings

  • Sealed bid solicitation
  • Supplier registration network
  • Contract catalogues
  • Cooperative purchasing
  • Spend and compliance reporting
  • Supplier diversity tracking

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.

Periscope Holdings

  • A state building a central procurement portal serving many agencies and local entitiesnot Syft
  • A large agency needing statutory sealed bidding with a public opening recordnot Syft
  • A purchasing programme that must report spend and supplier diversity across entitiesnot Syft
  • A state wanting local governments to buy from its awarded cooperative contractsnot Syft

Syft

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

Where each one falls short

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

Periscope Holdings

  • It is scaled and priced for statewide programmes, so a single city or county typically finds both the implementation effort and the cost out of proportion to its needs.
  • The interface reflects the age and regulatory weight of the platform, and suppliers routinely describe registration and bidding as harder than on newer portals, which can suppress bid response.
  • Ownership has changed twice since 2021, from independent to mdf commerce to KKR, so roadmap and support continuity should be written into the contract rather than assumed.
  • Sibling products inside mdf commerce cover adjacent procurement ground, which means an apparently competitive shortlist may contain two products with the same owner.
  • Statewide implementations are multi year projects with heavy configuration and change management, and the professional services cost commonly exceeds the software over the contract term.

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

Periscope Holdings

On request
  • BuySpeed$undefined/year
    • Quoted per programme, scaled to entities served and transaction volume
    • Multi year statewide contracts with implementation priced separately
    • Supplier side registration fees form part of the commercial model on some programmes

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 Periscope Holdings if

  • You need sealed bid solicitation.
  • You also want supplier registration network.
Periscope Holdings 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 Periscope Holdings or Syft better?
Neither clearly leads. Periscope Holdings 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, Periscope Holdings or Syft?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Periscope Holdings and Free for Syft.
Does Periscope Holdings or Syft run on more platforms?
Periscope Holdings 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. Periscope Holdings starts at On request.
What is Periscope Holdings best used for?
Periscope Holdings is most often used for a state building a central procurement portal serving many agencies and local entities, a large agency needing statutory sealed bidding with a public opening record, a purchasing programme that must report spend and supplier diversity across entities, a state wanting local governments to buy from its awarded cooperative contracts. Of those, a state building a central procurement portal serving many agencies and local entities and a large agency needing statutory sealed bidding with a public opening record are not what Syft is typically brought in for.
What can Periscope Holdings do that Syft cannot?
Periscope Holdings covers Sealed bid solicitation, Supplier registration network, Contract catalogues, Cooperative purchasing. Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Periscope Holdings: Who owns Periscope Holdings?

mdf commerce acquired it in 2021, and mdf commerce was itself acquired by KKR in 2024.

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.

Periscope Holdings: Is it suitable for a single city?

Usually not. It is built and priced for statewide or very large agency programmes.

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.

Periscope Holdings: What is BuySpeed?

The e-procurement platform behind its statewide deployments, covering solicitation through catalogue ordering and reporting.

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.

Periscope Holdings: Can we see what a state paid?

Yes. State procurement awards are public records and typically disclose the full multi year contract value.

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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