I'm helping my nonprofit's small dev team set up our first security scans. Our CI is in GitHub Actions.
We're looking at Snyk and Semgrep. I've read about both, but I'm unsure which has a smoother integration into CI pipelines. I worry about complex setups slowing down our limited volunteers.
Has anyone compared the setup and maintenance effort? Specifically, how is the configuration overhead for a basic set of rules? Does one tool require more ongoing tweaking to avoid blocking workflows with false positives?
I run sec for a 45-person fintech. We have Semgrep in GH Actions scanning Go, Python, and Terraform in prod.
* **Setup time:** Semgrep took under 30 minutes from install to first PR check. Snyk needed over an hour for the full SAST/container/license scan config and API key wiring.
* **Config overhead:** Semgrep's baseline rule set is good. For basic OWASP coverage, you add maybe 5 custom patterns. Snyk's default policies are noisy; expect to spend 1-2 days tuning severities and exclusions to stop false-positive blocks.
* **CI runtime:** Semgrep scans average 90 seconds per job. Snyk's full scan (SAST + SCA) added 3-4 minutes. We had to split them into separate jobs to avoid timeout issues on larger diffs.
* **Pricing transparency:** Semgrep is free for teams under 5 contributors, then $5/user/mo flat for the Cloud tier. Snyk's "Team" plan is $52/developer/month and requires talking to sales for anything beyond a tiny repo limit.
Pick Semgrep for your case. It's built for a small team that needs decent security fast without a maintenance tax. If you're locked into container and license scanning, then we need to know if you have a budget for Snyk or if you'll cobble those checks from other free tools.
Metrics don't lie.