Cybersecurity · head to head
Syft vs Weaviate
Syft
Cybersecurity
Generates a software bill of materials from images, filesystems and archives
- From
- Free
- Rated
- -
The short version
- 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.; Weaviate the free tier caps at 100,000 objects, 1 GB of memory and a single collection
- They diverge on capability: Syft covers Multi-format output, Weaviate covers Vector and keyword search.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Syft and Weaviate actually diverge.
Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Weaviate
- Vector and keyword search
- Built-in vectorizers
- GraphQL API
- Multi-tenancy
- Hybrid search
- OpenAI
- Hugging Face
- Cohere
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 Weaviate
- Feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directlynot Weaviate
- Recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quicklynot Weaviate
- Public sector work where an SBOM is a contractual deliverablenot Weaviate
Weaviate
- Running a vector database for semantic and hybrid searchnot Syft
- Generating and storing embeddings alongside the objects they describenot 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.
Weaviate
- The free tier caps at 100,000 objects, 1 GB of memory and a single collection
- Billing is per million vector dimensions rather than per record, so wider embeddings cost proportionally more for the same object count
- Premium is a prepaid contract starting at $400 a month rather than pay as you go
- Storage rates do not fall consistently with tier, and Premium Dedicated is $0.1505 per GiB against $0.12 on the cheaper Flex plan
- The Query Agent is metered separately, free to 1,000 requests a month and $30 a month plus overage beyond
Pricing, plan by plan
Syft
Free- SyftFree
- Apache-2.0
- No usage limits
- Community support
- Anchore Enterprise$undefined/year
- Policy enforcement and reporting
- Federal and commercial tiers
- Pricing not published, quoted on request
Weaviate
Free- Open SourceFree
- Full features
- Self-hosted
- ServerlessFree
- Managed service
- Auto-scaling
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.
Choose Weaviate if
- You need vector and keyword search.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Linux, Mac, Windows, Web.
- You also want built-in vectorizers.
Questions people ask
- Is Syft or Weaviate better?
- Neither clearly leads. Syft starts at Free and Weaviate at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Syft or Weaviate?
- Syft starts at Free and Weaviate at Free.
- Does Syft or Weaviate run on more platforms?
- Syft runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Weaviate runs on Linux, Mac, Windows, Web.
- Can I use Syft for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- 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 Weaviate is typically brought in for.
- What can Syft do that Weaviate cannot?
- Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations. Weaviate covers Vector and keyword search, Built-in vectorizers, GraphQL API, Multi-tenancy.
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.
Weaviate: What pricing options does Weaviate offer?
Weaviate provides a free tier with usage-based pricing, plus enterprise options. Visit the pricing page for detailed information on plans.
SourceSyft: 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.
Weaviate: Does Weaviate offer customer support?
Yes, support is included with Weaviate's cloud offerings. Enterprise customers receive first-class support from their global team of experts.
SourceSyft: 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.
Weaviate: Can I deploy Weaviate on my own infrastructure?
Yes. Weaviate is open source and deployment-agnostic. You can run it in your own cloud environment or use their managed cloud service.
SourceSyft: What does Anchore Enterprise cost?
Not published. The pricing page is contact-sales only, with named but unpriced commercial and federal tiers.
Weaviate: What data security features does Weaviate provide?
Weaviate includes security & governance, RBAC, SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance, along with multi-tenancy and high availability for enterprise requirements.
SourceSyft: 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.
Weaviate: How do I get started with Weaviate?
Sign up for their cloud tier, create your first dataset, connect an LLM, and build your AI app. Documentation and quickstart guides are available for Python, Go, TypeScript, and JavaScript.
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