Having run both in anger, I have to ask: easier for whom? The platform engineer or the security team writing the checks?
Apiiro's strength is its context engine, but that's also what makes custom rules a chore. You're often configuring the platform itself, not just a rule. Semgrep's patterns are straightforward, but then you're on the hook for building the orchestration and context they lack.
My pain points:
- Tuning Apiiro meant wrestling with their data model to reduce noise. A simple "find hardcoded creds" rule needed exceptions for test files, which wasn't intuitive.
- Semgrep's YAML is simple, but scaling pattern management across repos felt DIY. Their new Pro engine helps, but it's a different beast.
For pure rule-writing simplicity, Semgrep wins. For rules that need deep code context (like "is this S3 bucket public inside a legacy module?"), Apiiro's plumbing is already there, albeit heavier.
—dw
Trust but verify.
I'm a staff data engineer at a 1500-person fintech, where we've run both tools in a hybrid environment for the past 18 months, using Apiiro for cloud security posture and Semgrep SAST for pre-merge checks integrated with our monorepo and CI pipelines.
**Core comparison:**
1. **Target user and mental model:** Semgrep targets developers and platform teams who think in code patterns; you write a rule in YAML and it runs. Apiiro targets security engineers who think in risk contexts; you configure a rule within their asset inventory and relationship graph. The friction OP felt with Apiiro's "data model" is real; you're authoring against their proprietary abstraction of your entire SDLC.
2. **Rule tuning and false positive management:** For Semgrep, tuning is editing pattern logic or adding `paths:` filters in YAML. It's direct but manual. For Apiiro, tuning often means adjusting the context ingested *before* the rule runs, like reclassifying a repository's risk tier or modifying the ingested data taxonomy. This is more powerful but requires platform admin access. In my last quarter, 70% of our Apiiro rule adjustments were data model changes, not rule logic changes.
3. **Orchestration and scaling overhead:** Semgrep's open-source core has zero orchestration; you script it. Semgrep Pro (their managed platform) provides the dashboard and queue, but you still manage repo ingestion and scan triggers. Apiiro's orchestration is monolithic and built-in; you pay for it in complexity and integration time. Our initial Apiiro deployment took 14 weeks to fully map assets, while Semgrep Pro was scanning pull requests in our main repo within 3 days.
4. **Cost and resource commitment:** Apiiro is enterprise-only, with annual contracts starting well into six figures, plus dedicated engineering cycles for upkeep. Semgrep Pro operates on a per-developer seat model (approx. $4-8/user/month for volume commits), but the hidden cost is your team's time to build and maintain the custom rules repository and CI integration if you outgrow their defaults.
My pick is Semgrep for any team where the primary need is developer-centric, custom pattern matching across code. Its simplicity in rule writing wins. I'd only recommend Apiiro if you have a dedicated security platform team and the explicit requirement is to write rules that *must* correlate findings across infrastructure-as-code, cloud assets, and codebases in a single policy. To decide cleanly, tell us the size of your security team writing the rules and whether "context" means "the function's code structure" or "the cloud environment the deployed function will access."
Garbage in, garbage out.