Cybersecurity · head to head
Resolver vs Syft
Resolver
Cybersecurity
Risk, incident and investigations platform for corporate security and operational risk teams, owned by Kroll
- From
- On request
- Rated
- -
Syft
Cybersecurity
Generates a software bill of materials from images, filesystems and archives
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- Only Syft has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
- Each has a real cost: Resolver kroll ownership since 2022 means the product is sold alongside risk consulting services, so buyers who want software with no services attach should expect that conversation and should price the licence separately in negotiation.; 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: Resolver covers Incident management, Syft covers Multi-format output.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Resolver and Syft actually diverge.
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 Resolver
- Incident management
- Investigations
- Enterprise risk management
- Internal audit
- Compliance and obligations
- Business continuity
- Risk Event Management
- Configurable dashboards
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.
Resolver
- A national retailer consolidating store incident reporting, loss prevention cases and investigations into one system with defensible evidence handlingnot Syft
- A bank that needs operational risk events captured against a risk and control register rather than in spreadsheets and emailnot Syft
- A university security operations centre running dispatch, case management and clery-style reporting from a single recordnot Syft
- An organisation that already retains Kroll for investigations and wants case intake and vendor handoff in the same platformnot Syft
Syft
- Producing a bill of materials for a customer or regulator that requires onenot Resolver
- Feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directlynot Resolver
- Recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quicklynot Resolver
- Public sector work where an SBOM is a contractual deliverablenot Resolver
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Resolver
- Kroll ownership since 2022 means the product is sold alongside risk consulting services, so buyers who want software with no services attach should expect that conversation and should price the licence separately in negotiation.
- Configuration flexibility comes at the cost of implementation time, with deployments commonly running several months and typically requiring vendor or partner services, so the first-year cost is well above the annual licence.
- Module-based pricing means the platform gets expensive quickly once you add audit, compliance and continuity to a security-led purchase, and modules bought later rarely carry the discount of the original deal.
- The IT and cyber compliance side is thinner than dedicated tools, so organisations chasing SOC 2 or ISO 27001 evidence automation will find it does not replace a Drata or Vanta.
- Reporting is capable but the drag and drop builder has a real learning curve, and organisations that do not train an internal administrator end up raising support tickets for changes that should be self-service.
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
Resolver
On request- Resolver Core$undefined/year
- Priced by modules selected and number of users
- Annual or multi-year enterprise agreement
- Implementation and configuration quoted separately
Syft
Free- SyftFree
- Apache-2.0
- No usage limits
- Community support
- Anchore Enterprise$undefined/year
- Policy enforcement and reporting
- Federal and commercial tiers
- Pricing not published, quoted on request
Which should you pick?
Choose Resolver if
- You need incident management.
- You work on Web, iOS, Android.
- You also want investigations.
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.
Questions people ask
- Is Resolver or Syft better?
- Neither clearly leads. Resolver 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, Resolver or Syft?
- Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Resolver and Free for Syft.
- Does Resolver or Syft run on more platforms?
- Resolver 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. Resolver starts at On request.
- What is Resolver best used for?
- Resolver is most often used for a national retailer consolidating store incident reporting, loss prevention cases and investigations into one system with defensible evidence handling, a bank that needs operational risk events captured against a risk and control register rather than in spreadsheets and email, a university security operations centre running dispatch, case management and clery-style reporting from a single record, an organisation that already retains kroll for investigations and wants case intake and vendor handoff in the same platform. Of those, a national retailer consolidating store incident reporting, loss prevention cases and investigations into one system with defensible evidence handling and a bank that needs operational risk events captured against a risk and control register rather than in spreadsheets and email are not what Syft is typically brought in for.
- What can Resolver do that Syft cannot?
- Resolver covers Incident management, Investigations, Enterprise risk management, Internal audit. Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Resolver: Who owns Resolver?
Kroll, which acquired it in 2022. It is marketed as a Kroll business and sold alongside Kroll risk and investigations services.
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.
Resolver: What does Resolver cost?
Pricing is not published. It is quoted by module and user count on an annual or multi-year enterprise agreement, with implementation charged separately.
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.
Resolver: Is Resolver a SOC 2 compliance tool?
No. It is a risk, incident and investigations platform. Automated evidence collection for security certifications is not its strength.
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.
Resolver: How long does implementation take?
Months rather than weeks for a multi-module deployment, and most customers use vendor or partner services to configure it.
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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- Syft vs Transmit Security
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- Syft vs VMware Carbon Black