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Cybersecurity · head to head

Syft vs Zabbix

Syft logo

Syft

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Zabbix logo

Zabbix

Networking

Open source infrastructure and network monitoring with distributed proxies and templating

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

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.; Zabbix the database is the scaling limit, and high frequency polling grows history tables fast enough that untuned installations hit housekeeping stalls and query timeouts within months.
  • They diverge on capability: Syft covers Multi-format output, Zabbix covers Agent and agentless collection.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Syft and Zabbix actually diverge.

Attributes where Syft and Zabbix differ
AttributeSyftZabbix
PlatformsmacOS, Linux, Windows, DockerLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web
CategoryCybersecurityNetworking

Identical on both: starting price (Free), pricing model (Open source, no licence fee), 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 Zabbix

  • Agent and agentless collection
  • Templates
  • Low-level discovery
  • Distributed proxies
  • Trigger expressions
  • Escalation actions

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

Zabbix

  • A service provider monitoring thousands of customer devices where per-device commercial licensing is the largest line itemnot Syft
  • Branch or industrial sites with unreliable links that need local collection and bufferingnot Syft
  • Mixed estates where the same tool must poll SNMP switches, Linux hosts, Windows servers and Java applicationsnot Syft
  • Replacing an aging Nagios installation while keeping script-based checks that already existnot 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.

Zabbix

  • The database is the scaling limit, and high frequency polling grows history tables fast enough that untuned installations hit housekeeping stalls and query timeouts within months.
  • Initial configuration is heavy; getting useful alerting rather than noise requires understanding trigger expressions, macros and template inheritance, which is a multi-week learning curve for a team new to it.
  • The AGPLv3 change at version 7.0 affects anyone offering Zabbix over a network as part of a commercial service, and that obligation is easy to inherit accidentally during an upgrade.
  • The web interface is functional rather than pleasant, and many sites end up running Grafana alongside it purely for presentation, which is a second system to maintain.
  • Upgrades between major versions touch the database schema and can take hours on large history tables, so the maintenance window is proportional to how much data you kept.

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

Zabbix

Free
  • ZabbixFree
    • No device, node or metric limits
    • Full feature set with no paid edition of the software
    • AGPLv3 from version 7.0 onward
  • Zabbix Technical Support$undefined/year
    • Tiered subscriptions with defined response times
    • Access to Zabbix engineers for configuration and performance issues
    • Bug fix priority and backports

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 Zabbix if

  • You need agent and agentless collection.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Web.
  • You also want templates.
Zabbix review

Questions people ask

Is Syft or Zabbix better?
Neither clearly leads. Syft starts at Free and Zabbix at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Syft or Zabbix?
Syft starts at Free and Zabbix at Free.
Does Syft or Zabbix run on more platforms?
Syft runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Zabbix runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, 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 Zabbix is typically brought in for.
What can Syft do that Zabbix cannot?
Syft covers Multi-format output, Broad ecosystem coverage, Binary classifiers, In-toto attestations. Zabbix covers Agent and agentless collection, Templates, Low-level discovery, Distributed proxies.

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.

Zabbix: Is Zabbix genuinely free for commercial use?

The software has no licence fee at any scale. From version 7.0 it is AGPLv3, so offering it as a network service to third parties carries source distribution obligations.

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.

Zabbix: What is the real cost of running it?

Database administration and the person who tunes it. Budget for PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB and someone who owns the retention policy.

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.

Zabbix: How does it compare to a commercial per-device tool?

It removes the licence line entirely and adds an operations line. Below a few hundred devices the commercial tool is often cheaper in total; above that Zabbix wins clearly.

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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