Dependabot brings automated dependency updates to GitHub users. But what if you need more customization or capabilities? Here, we explore 7 reliable alternatives for 2023.
From free open-source tools to full-featured application security platforms, these software security alternatives go way beyond Dependabot:
- More languages and package managers
- Fully configurable schedules and behaviors
- Advanced security scanning for vulnerabilities
- License compliance monitoring
- Integration with additional DevOps workflows
- Container scanning, and more.
Discover which alternative application security platform fits your tech stack and development organization. We’ll compare key features, integrations, and usage across:
- Aikido Security
- Renovate
- Snyk
By the end, you’ll understand the leading competitors and alternatives for customizing automated dependency management based on your priorities.
What is Dependabot?
Dependabot is a popular automated dependency upgrade tool developed by GitHub. It monitors your dependency manifests (like package.json or pom.xml) for outdated packages and automatically creates pull requests to update them to the latest versions that pass your tests.
Dependabot comes automatically integrated into GitHub, with support for dozens of package managers and languages. Setting up, configuring, and free for public repositories is easy. This makes Dependabot a great starting point for automated dependency management for all kinds of development teams.
But, in 2022, Dependabot automatically generated more than 75 million pull requests, which developers used to keep their dependencies up-to-date and to address millions of specific vulnerabilities. A common complaint is that Dependabot creates a lot of noise. What can developers do to prevent this?
Top Alternatives for Dependabot
Luckily, Dependabot isn’t the only option, as your company grows and your security needs increase, you might want to scale to a bigger and better tool. Here are some top alternatives to consider:
Aikido Security
Aikido Security is an all-in-one application security platform that includes automated dependency scanning. It is a fantastic upgrade as a Dependabot alternative. It provides additional security scanning (SAST, DAST, infrastructure as code, container scanning, secrets detections, and more) to catch vulnerabilities introduced via dependencies or developer mistakes.
Instead of spamming users with unnecessary upgrades that teams have to take time to manage, Aikido will automatically auto-triage vulnerabilities and only suggest dependency upgrades that matter. Saving your team time and money and eliminating false positives in the review process.
With native integrations with Github, GitLab, BitBucket, and all kinds of cloud providers, Container registries and IDEs, Aikido is a top choice for teams of all sizes.
“We canceled our bi-weekly meeting to triage Dependabot issues as soon as we started using Aikido.”
Pricing: Free up to 3 users, 10 repos, 2 containers, and 1 domain.
Renovate
Renovate is an open-source tool designed to automate updating dependencies in a software project. It identifies relevant package files within a codebase, including monorepos, and then checks for updates to those dependencies. When it finds an update, it creates a pull request to merge those changes into the main branch.
Teams of all sizes use Renovate and can be run as a self-hosted service or used via the Mend Renovate App, which was acquired and is now hosted by Mend.
Pricing: Renovate is open-source and free to use.
Snyk Open Source
Snyk Open Source performs automated dependency upgrades, license compliance monitoring, and security scanning. It supports popular languages like JavaScript, Java, Python, and Ruby for both application testing and container/infrastructure code security.
Snyk acquired Greenkeeper in 2020, and as a result, Greenkeeper was phased out, and its users were migrated to Snyk. The acquisition allowed Snyk to expand its dependency management capabilities and integrate Greenkeeper’s features into its own platform.
As a cloud-based platform, Snyk provides excellent reporting and integration capabilities for today’s DevSecOps teams. However, the free open-source tier is fairly limited.
Pricing: Free up to 100 open-source tests per month.
Conclusion
Dependabot simplifies dependency management for GitHub users. Yet many viable Dependabot alternatives exist, with Aikido Security standing out as a full-featured application security platform, including automated upgrades.
Consider which capabilities beyond basic dependency updates are most important for your tech stack, integration needs, and team workflow. The options explored here should give you several great choices to research further and discuss with your developers.
