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Cybersecurity · head to head

Syft vs Trimble Unity Maintain

Syft logo

Syft

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite
Trimble Unity Maintain logo

Trimble Unity Maintain

Government

GIS-centric public asset and work management, the product formerly sold as Cityworks

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Syft has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: 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.; Trimble Unity Maintain esri ArcGIS is a hard prerequisite, so an organisation without it faces a second substantial licence and a GIS programme before the maintenance system can be used at all.
  • They diverge on capability: Syft covers Multi-format output, Trimble Unity Maintain covers Built on ArcGIS.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Syft and Trimble Unity Maintain actually diverge.

Attributes where Syft and Trimble Unity Maintain differ
AttributeSyftTrimble Unity Maintain
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsmacOS, Linux, Windows, DockerWeb, iOS, Android, Windows
CategoryCybersecurityGovernment

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 Syft

  • Multi-format output
  • Broad ecosystem coverage
  • Binary classifiers
  • In-toto attestations
  • Library and CLI
  • Pairs with Grype

Only in Trimble Unity Maintain

  • Built on ArcGIS
  • Service requests
  • Work order management
  • Permits and licensing
  • Mobile field access
  • Storeroom and inventory
  • Operational Insights
  • AgileAssets convergence

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Syft

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

Trimble Unity Maintain

  • A water utility wanting valve exercising and hydrant flushing recorded against the same GIS features the engineering team maintainsnot Syft
  • A city consolidating a citizen service request line, work orders and inspections into one location-based systemnot Syft
  • A state transportation department managing pavement and bridge assets with linear referencing rather than point assetsnot Syft
  • A public works department that has already licensed ArcGIS Enterprise and wants to avoid rekeying its asset inventorynot Syft

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Trimble Unity Maintain

  • Esri ArcGIS is a hard prerequisite, so an organisation without it faces a second substantial licence and a GIS programme before the maintenance system can be used at all.
  • The product is mid-rename from Cityworks to Trimble Unity Maintain with transition timelines Trimble has not committed to publicly, leaving contracts, documentation and integrator experience split between two names.
  • CVE-2025-0994, a deserialisation flaw in Cityworks, was exploited in the wild and listed by CISA in February 2025, which makes on-premise deployments a patching obligation rather than a set-and-forget install.
  • Because assets live in the GIS, changing the asset model is a GIS division change, so maintenance teams cannot restructure their own hierarchy without another department in the loop.
  • It is built for North American public sector practice, and the permitting, funding source and reporting models do not map cleanly onto other countries or onto private industrial estates.

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Trimble Unity Maintain

On request
  • Trimble Unity Maintain$undefined/year
    • Annual subscription sized by population served, asset volume and user count
    • Esri ArcGIS Enterprise or ArcGIS Online licensing required separately
    • Hosted and on-premise deployment priced differently

Which should you pick?

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

Choose Trimble Unity Maintain if

  • You need built on arcgis.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
  • You also want service requests.
Trimble Unity Maintain review

Questions people ask

Is Syft or Trimble Unity Maintain better?
Neither clearly leads. Syft starts at Free and Trimble Unity Maintain at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Syft or Trimble Unity Maintain?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Syft and On request for Trimble Unity Maintain.
Does Syft or Trimble Unity Maintain run on more platforms?
Syft runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Trimble Unity Maintain runs on Web, iOS, Android, Windows.
Can I use Syft for free?
Yes. Syft has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Trimble Unity Maintain starts at On request.
What is Syft best used for?
Syft is most often used for producing a bill of materials for a customer or regulator that requires one, feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directly, recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quickly, public sector work where an sbom is a contractual deliverable. Of those, producing a bill of materials for a customer or regulator that requires one and feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directly are not what Trimble Unity Maintain is typically brought in for.
What can Syft do that Trimble Unity Maintain cannot?
Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations. Trimble Unity Maintain covers Built on ArcGIS, Service requests, Work order management, Permits and licensing.

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.

Trimble Unity Maintain: Is Cityworks discontinued?

Not discontinued, renamed. It is becoming Trimble Unity Maintain, converging with AgileAssets, and Trimble has not published a final transition date.

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.

Trimble Unity Maintain: Do I need Esri ArcGIS?

Yes. The product is built on ArcGIS and cannot be deployed without an Esri licence.

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.

Trimble Unity Maintain: Was there a security incident?

Yes. CVE-2025-0994 in Cityworks was exploited in the wild and added to the CISA known exploited vulnerabilities catalogue in February 2025.

Syft: What does Anchore Enterprise cost?

Not published. The pricing page is contact-sales only, with named but unpriced commercial and federal tiers.

Trimble Unity Maintain: Can it handle roads and pavement as well as pipes?

Yes, through the AgileAssets lineage now inside the Unity Maintain family, which adds linear referencing for transportation assets.

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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