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Government · head to head

Polco vs Syft

Polco logo

Polco

Government

Civic Engagement and Polling Platform

From
$300/month
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: Polco interface has a formal, academic tone compared to modern civic engagement platforms; 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: Polco covers Scientific Surveys, Syft covers Multi-format output.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Polco and Syft actually diverge.

Attributes where Polco and Syft differ
AttributePolcoSyft
Starting price$300/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Ios, AndroidmacOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity
Founded2015Unknown

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 Polco

  • Scientific Surveys
  • Live Polling
  • Community Benchmarking
  • Priority-Based Budgeting
  • Demographic Analysis
  • NRC Surveys
  • ArcGIS
  • Social Media

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.

Polco

  • Citizen Servicesnot Syft
  • Records Managementnot Syft
  • Public Safetynot Syft
  • Civic Engagementnot Syft

Syft

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

Where each one falls short

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

Polco

  • Interface has a formal, academic tone compared to modern civic engagement platforms
  • Emphasizes surveys and benchmarking over open discussion forums and idea boards
  • Pricing is custom quote-based without transparent pricing on the website

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

Polco

$300/month
  • Community Engagement$300/month
    • Community Surveys
    • Live Polling
    • Benchmarking

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 Polco if

  • You need scientific surveys.
  • You work on Web, Ios, Android.
  • You also want live polling.
Polco 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 Polco or Syft better?
Neither clearly leads. Polco starts at $300/month and Syft at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Polco or Syft?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $300/month for Polco and Free for Syft.
Does Polco or Syft run on more platforms?
Polco runs on Web, 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. Polco starts at $300/month.
What is Polco best used for?
Polco is most often used for citizen services, records management, public safety, civic engagement. Of those, citizen services and records management are not what Syft is typically brought in for.
What can Polco do that Syft cannot?
Polco covers Scientific Surveys, Live Polling, Community Benchmarking, Priority-Based Budgeting. Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Polco: How does Polco ensure survey data quality?

Polco uses scientific survey methodology through the National Research Center, with pre-tested survey questions and verification that participants live in the surveyed area to eliminate outside interference and bad-faith responses.

Source
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.

Polco: What's the difference between Polco and open discussion platforms?

Polco emphasizes scientific surveys and benchmarking over open forums or suggestion boards, prioritizing rigorous data collection for policy decisions over broad community brainstorming.

Source
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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