Cybersecurity · head to head
Syft vs Yarn
Syft
Cybersecurity
Generates a software bill of materials from images, filesystems and archives
- From
- Free
- Free plan
- Yes
Yarn
Developer Tools
Fast, reliable, and secure dependency management
- From
- Free
- Free plan
- Yes
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.; Yarn yarn 2+ (Berry) has limited ESM support which can be a constraint for some projects
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Syft and Yarn 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 Yarn
Nothing recorded that Syft does not also cover.
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 Yarn
- Feeding an inventory into a vulnerability scanner rather than scanning images directlynot Yarn
- Recording what shipped in a build so a future disclosure can be answered quicklynot Yarn
- Public sector work where an SBOM is a contractual deliverablenot Yarn
Yarn
- Monorepo teams managing dependencies across 50+ interdependent packagesnot Syft
- Enterprise JavaScript projects ensuring reproducible builds across CI/CDnot Syft
- Open-source projects with plugin ecosystems coordinating versionsnot Syft
- Teams requiring consistent package installs regardless of network conditionsnot 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.
Yarn
- Yarn 2+ (Berry) has limited ESM support which can be a constraint for some projects
- Smaller ecosystem and community compared to npm, though still substantial
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
Yarn
FreeNo published plan breakdown. See the Yarn review.
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.
Questions people ask
- Is Syft or Yarn better?
- Neither clearly leads. Syft starts at Free and Yarn at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Syft or Yarn?
- Syft starts at Free and Yarn at Free.
- Does Syft or Yarn run on more platforms?
- Syft runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Yarn runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows.
- 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 Yarn is typically brought in for.
- What can Syft do that Yarn cannot?
- Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations.
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.
Yarn: What is Yarn's main advantage over npm?
Yarn downloads packages in parallel, significantly reducing installation time. It uses a yarn.lock file for deterministic installs, ensuring identical package versions across machines and preventing version conflicts common with npm.
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.
Yarn: Can I use Yarn in offline environments?
Yes, Yarn supports secure offline environments. The yarn.lock file enables reproducible installs without requiring new downloads.
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.
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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