Detectify vs Socket

Detectify is an application security platform that performs dynamic vulnerability scanning across external attack surfaces, testing domains, IPs, APIs, and applications with payload-based techniques rather than relying solely on static signature matching. Its Surface Monitoring product continuously discovers and maps external assets while testing them for exploitable vulnerabilities. Detectify's API scanning uses Dynamic AI Fuzzing to test REST and GraphQL endpoints, and its Application Scanning performs deep, authenticated DAST testing with AI-powered fuzzing and crawling. A distinctive part of the platform is its Crowdsource network of more than 400 ethical hackers who feed newly discovered vulnerabilities, including many without an assigned CVE, into Detectify's scanner within minutes of research.

Socket is a developer-first software supply chain security platform that protects applications from malicious dependencies, vulnerable packages, license risk, and supply-chain attacks across ecosystems including npm, PyPI, Go, Maven, Cargo, NuGet, and RubyGems. It uses deep package analysis across more than 70 alert categories, covering things like typosquats, obfuscated install scripts, unexpected network calls, and crypto-wallet-targeting code. Beyond detection, Socket offers reachability analysis to cut false positives by identifying which flagged dependencies are actually executed, plus SBOM export in CycloneDX/SPDX/OpenVEX formats, diff scans on pull requests, and a triage workflow. It ships as a hosted API, CLI, GitHub App, IDE extensions, and a package-installer firewall proxy, with integrations for GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Azure DevOps, Jira, Slack, and Microsoft Teams.

• Crowdsourced ethical hacker research surfaces vulnerabilities before they get a CVE
• Very fast turnaround from new research to live scanner test
• Combines surface monitoring, API, and application scanning in one platform
• Payload-based testing reduces false positives from static matching

• Free tier is genuinely usable for open-source projects with 1,000 scans/month
• Reachability analysis meaningfully cuts noisy false positives compared to naive dependency scanning
• Broad ecosystem coverage beyond just npm
• Deep integration options across CI/CD, chat, and issue tracking tools

• Pricing is not published and requires a demo or trial request
• Crowdsource-driven findings mean coverage depends partly on researcher activity
• Best suited to organizations with dedicated security or AppSec staff to act on findings

• Paid tiers charge per seat, which can add up for larger engineering orgs
• SSO/SAML is locked behind the higher Business tier
• Primarily targeted at teams already doing CI/CD-based development, less useful for ad hoc scanning