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Cybersecurity · head to head

Syft vs Very Good Security

Syft logo

Syft

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Very Good Security logo

Very Good Security

Cybersecurity

Tokenisation proxy that keeps card and personal data out of your own systems and out of PCI scope

From
$1000/month
Rated
-
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.; Very Good Security vGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • They diverge on capability: Syft covers Multi-format output, Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Syft and Very Good Security actually diverge.

Attributes where Syft and Very Good Security differ
AttributeSyftVery Good Security
Starting priceFree$1000/month
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsmacOS, Linux, Windows, DockerWeb, API

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 Syft

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

Only in Very Good Security

  • Aliasing proxy
  • PCI scope reduction
  • Network tokenisation
  • Processor optionality
  • Card issuing data
  • Vault and access controls
  • Data residency options
  • Compliance artefacts

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 Very Good Security
  • Feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directlynot Very Good Security
  • Recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quicklynot Very Good Security
  • Public sector work where an SBOM is a contractual deliverablenot Very Good Security

Very Good Security

  • A marketplace facing its first PCI DSS Level 1 assessment that wants to keep card data off its own estate rather than harden a dozen servicesnot Syft
  • A merchant negotiating with a second acquirer that needs card credentials portable so the negotiation is real rather than theoreticalnot Syft
  • A fintech collecting bank account and identity documents that wants sensitive fields absent from logs, backups and analytics warehouses by constructionnot Syft
  • A card issuer that must display a full PAN in its own mobile app without the app or its backend touching cardholder datanot 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.

Very Good Security

  • VGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • Token portability is the whole selling point yet leaving VGS means migrating tokens back out, a project the vendor has no incentive to streamline, so the lock-in you removed from your acquirer partly moves to VGS.
  • Entry pricing at around one thousand US dollars a month is real money for a pre-revenue fintech, and it buys volume-limited throughput, so cost scales with exactly the growth that made you buy it.
  • Scope reduction is not scope elimination: your QSA still assesses how you integrate, and teams regularly discover that a support tool or an internal admin screen pulled plaintext back in and dragged systems into scope again.
  • Proxy-based interception constrains how you design request flows, and non-standard payloads, streaming uploads or binary formats often need custom routing rules that make debugging production issues noticeably harder.

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

Very Good Security

$1000/month
  • Starter$1000/month
    • Aliasing proxy
    • Vault storage
    • PCI scope reduction
  • Growth$undefined/month
    • Network tokenisation
    • Multiple processors
    • Data residency options
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom vault architecture
    • Dedicated support and SLA
    • Contractual compliance coverage

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 Very Good Security if

  • You need aliasing proxy.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want pci scope reduction.
Very Good Security review

Questions people ask

Is Syft or Very Good Security better?
Neither clearly leads. Syft starts at Free and Very Good Security at $1000/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Syft or Very Good Security?
Syft has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Syft and $1000/month for Very Good Security.
Does Syft or Very Good Security run on more platforms?
Syft runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Very Good Security runs on Web, API.
Can I use Syft for free?
Yes. Syft has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Very Good Security starts at $1000/month.
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 Very Good Security is typically brought in for.
What can Syft do that Very Good Security cannot?
Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations. Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy, PCI scope reduction, Network tokenisation, Processor optionality.

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.

Very Good Security: Does VGS make me PCI compliant?

No. It removes cardholder data from your systems so your assessment covers a far smaller boundary, but you still complete an assessment and your integration is part of it.

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.

Very Good Security: Can I move to another processor without re-collecting cards?

Yes, that is a core reason people buy it. The vault reveals stored credentials to whichever processor you route to.

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.

Very Good Security: What does it cost?

Published entry pricing is about one thousand US dollars per month; growth and enterprise tiers are quoted.

Syft: What does Anchore Enterprise cost?

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

Very Good Security: Is it only for card data?

No. The proxy handles any sensitive field, including bank details, national identifiers and documents, though payments is where the product is now focused.

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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