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Cybersecurity · head to head

Rapid7 InsightVM vs Syft

Rapid7 InsightVM logo

Rapid7 InsightVM

Cybersecurity

Vulnerability management at scale

From
$1.62/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: Rapid7 InsightVM insightVM is now sold inside Exposure Command rather than as a standalone product; 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: Rapid7 InsightVM covers Asset discovery, Syft covers Multi-format output.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Rapid7 InsightVM and Syft actually diverge.

Attributes where Rapid7 InsightVM and Syft differ
AttributeRapid7 InsightVMSyft
Starting price$1.62/monthFree
Pricing modelusage-basedOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, Cloud, ApimacOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
Founded2000Unknown

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 Rapid7 InsightVM

  • Asset discovery
  • Vulnerability scanning
  • Risk prioritization
  • Threat intelligence
  • Custom policies
  • Remediation tracking
  • Compliance reporting
  • API access

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.

Rapid7 InsightVM

  • Vulnerability management and risk assessmentnot Syft
  • Web application security scanningnot Syft
  • Cloud infrastructure security monitoringnot Syft

Syft

  • Producing a bill of materials for a customer or regulator that requires onenot Rapid7 InsightVM
  • Feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directlynot Rapid7 InsightVM
  • Recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quicklynot Rapid7 InsightVM
  • Public sector work where an SBOM is a contractual deliverablenot Rapid7 InsightVM

Where each one falls short

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

Rapid7 InsightVM

  • InsightVM is now sold inside Exposure Command rather than as a standalone product
  • Rapid7 states pricing is not publicly listed and is provided by custom quote based on the customer's environment
  • Billing counts billable assets including devices, software, identities, cloud compute instances and applications, so the asset count grows faster than a device inventory suggests
  • Cloud security, compliance, infrastructure as code scanning and application security testing require the Ultimate package rather than Essentials
  • Volume discounts are described as commonly available for larger asset counts, so smaller buyers pay the higher unit rate

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

Rapid7 InsightVM

$1.62/month
  • InsightVM$1.62/month per asset
    • Vulnerability risk management
    • Unlimited user accounts
    • 24/7 technical support
  • InsightAppSec$175/month
    • Web application security
    • Per application pricing
    • Unlimited user accounts
  • InsightCloudsec$5775/month
    • Cloud security
    • Up to 500 instances
    • Unlimited user accounts

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 Rapid7 InsightVM if

  • You need asset discovery.
  • You work on Web, Cloud, Api.
  • You also want vulnerability scanning.
Rapid7 InsightVM 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 Rapid7 InsightVM or Syft better?
Neither clearly leads. Rapid7 InsightVM starts at $1.62/month and Syft at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Rapid7 InsightVM or Syft?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $1.62/month for Rapid7 InsightVM and Free for Syft.
Does Rapid7 InsightVM or Syft run on more platforms?
Rapid7 InsightVM runs on Web, Cloud, Api. 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. Rapid7 InsightVM starts at $1.62/month.
What is Rapid7 InsightVM best used for?
Rapid7 InsightVM is most often used for vulnerability management and risk assessment, web application security scanning, cloud infrastructure security monitoring. Of those, vulnerability management and risk assessment and web application security scanning are not what Syft is typically brought in for.
What can Rapid7 InsightVM do that Syft cannot?
Rapid7 InsightVM covers Asset discovery, Vulnerability scanning, Risk prioritization, Threat intelligence. Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Rapid7 InsightVM: What is the starting price for Rapid7 InsightVM?

InsightVM starts at $1.62 per month per asset, with example pricing provided for 500-asset deployments.

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.

Rapid7 InsightVM: How much does InsightAppSec cost?

InsightAppSec starts at $175 per month per application for web application security scanning.

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.

Rapid7 InsightVM: What does InsightCloudsec cover?

InsightCloudsec starts at $5,775 per month for cloud security monitoring of up to 500 instances.

Source
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.

Rapid7 InsightVM: Do Rapid7 products include unlimited user accounts?

Yes, all Rapid7 products include unlimited user accounts, 24/7 technical support, single sign-on, and customer-success team access.

Source
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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