GitGuardian vs TruffleHog
Feature checklists rarely decide anything. What decides it is the pricing metric, who has to write the tests, and which limitation you can live with.
Entry price
Free tier available
Free tierFree tier available
Free tierWhat drives the bill
The metric that actually scales your invoice.
Free tier covers small teams entirely; business pricing is quote-based per developer.
Free CLI; the enterprise platform adds continuous monitoring and reporting, priced on request.
Free tier
Free for individuals and teams up to 25 developers.
Open-source CLI is free and fully functional including verification.
Open source
AGPL-3.0
Self-hostable
No-code authoring
Languages
Platforms
Fits teams
Adoption
Widely used
GitGuardian · since 2017
Widely used
Truffle Security · since 2016
Strengths
- Validity checking distinguishes a live credential from a revoked one, which transforms triage priority.
- Scans full commit history, where most leaked secrets actually live.
- Free for teams up to 25 developers.
- Live verification cuts false positives to near zero for supported providers.
- Free and easy to add as a pre-commit hook or CI step.
- Scans far beyond git — buckets, images, logs.
Limitations
- Secrets scanning only — not a general security platform.
- Historical scans on old repositories produce a large initial backlog.
- Requires repository access, which needs a security review of its own.
- No dashboard or workflow in the free CLI.
- Verification requires outbound network calls, which some environments block.
- Full-history scans on large repositories are slow.
Best for
Any organisation with more than a handful of repositories and no secrets scanning today.
Teams that want free, high-signal secret scanning in the pipeline today.
Pricing last reviewed August 2026 and is indicative only — confirm on each vendor’s own page.