TL;DR
- Snyk, Checkmarx, and Veracode are priced for 200-developer enterprises, not solo builders. Full suites run $100k+ a year.
- SafeWeave gives you 8 security scanners inside Cursor and Claude Code for $0 to $29/month, no sales call.
- If you are a solopreneur, a small team, or a vibe coder shipping AI-generated code, you are paying enterprise prices for features you cannot use.
I run a small stack. Two side projects that make money, one that might. I write most of it in Cursor and Claude Code now, which means an AI writes the first draft of nearly every function I ship.
That is fast. It is also how you end up with a hardcoded API key in a commit, a SQL query built from string interpolation, or an endpoint with no auth check. AI editors reproduce the insecure patterns they learned from a decade of StackOverflow answers. So I went looking for a scanner.
What I found was a market built for companies with a security team and a procurement department. Here is what everyone is actually charging in 2026, and why most of these tools make no sense if you are not an enterprise.
The enterprise tools, priced honestly
Snyk starts free, then jumps to $25 per contributing developer per month on the Team plan, capped around 10 developers. Past that you are into Enterprise, which is a custom quote. Real transaction data puts Enterprise around $48,000 to $84,000 a year for 50 developers. The free tier is real but limited, and the moment you want the full product you are talking to sales.
Checkmarx does not publish prices. SAST alone runs roughly $10,000 to $15,000 a year. A full suite for a 200-developer shop lands at $150,000 to $300,000+ a year. There is no self-serve path. You book a demo.
Veracode is the same shape. SAST starts around $15,000 a year for up to 100 applications, and a full enterprise suite clears $100,000 annually. Multi-year commitment for any real discount.
SonarQube is the most accessible of the four. The Community Build is free and self-hosted. But Developer Edition is about $2,500 a year, Enterprise about $16,000 a year, and Data Center Edition around $100,000 a year. Pricing scales on lines of code, and SAST plus SCA only show up on the paid tiers.
Notice the pattern. Every one of these was designed for an organization that measures developers in the hundreds and has someone whose job is buying security software. None of them were built for one person shipping a Next.js app on a Tuesday night.
Feature comparison
| SafeWeave | Snyk | Checkmarx | Veracode | SonarQube | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Runs inside AI editor (MCP) | Yes, native | No | No | No | No |
| Cursor / Claude Code / Windsurf | Yes | VS Code only | No | No | No |
| Scanners in one tool | 8 | 4 separate products | Modular add-ons | Modular add-ons | SAST + quality |
| SAST | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Secrets detection | Built in | Via integrations | Add-on | Add-on | No |
| Dependency / SCA | Yes | Yes | Add-on | Add-on | Paid tier |
| DAST | Yes | No | Add-on | Add-on | No |
| IaC + Container | Yes | Partial | Add-on | Limited | No |
| Local execution (code stays on machine) | Yes | Cloud-based | Cloud/on-prem | Cloud | Self-host option |
| Setup time | 30 seconds (npx) | Minutes | Days | Days | Hours to days |
| Scan speed | ~12 seconds | Minutes | Minutes to hours | Minutes to hours | Minutes to hours |
| Self-serve signup | Yes | Partial | No, sales only | No, sales only | Partial |
Price comparison
| Tool | Entry price | Real cost at scale | Sales call required |
|---|---|---|---|
| SafeWeave | $0, Pro $15/mo, Cloud $29/mo | Team $99/mo for 25 seats | No |
| Snyk | Free, then $25/dev/mo | ~$48k-$84k/yr (50 devs, Enterprise) | Yes for full product |
| Checkmarx | No public price | $150k-$300k+/yr (full suite) | Yes |
| Veracode | ~$15k/yr (SAST) | $100k+/yr (full suite) | Yes |
| SonarQube | Free (Community) | $16k/yr Enterprise, ~$100k Data Center | Yes above Developer |
Why this matters if you are not an enterprise
The enterprise tools are good. That is not the argument. The argument is that their pricing, setup, and workflow assume a security team sitting between the developer and production. If you are a solopreneur or a three-person startup, you are the developer, the security team, and procurement. You do not have days to configure Checkmarx or a budget line for a $50,000 Snyk contract.
You also work differently. You are not pushing code through a CI pipeline that runs a scan an hour later. You are generating code in Cursor and shipping it in the same session. A scanner that lives in your CI is checking the code long after you have moved on. A scanner that lives in your editor catches it while the context is still in your head.
That is the gap SafeWeave was built for. It runs as an MCP server, so it plugs straight into Cursor, Claude Code, VS Code, and Windsurf. You ask the AI to scan the project, and eight scanners run in parallel on your machine, finishing in about 12 seconds. SAST, secrets, dependencies, IaC, container, DAST, license, and API posture, all at once. Then you tell the AI to fix what it found and it applies the patches.
What it costs
The free tier runs SAST, secrets, and dependency scanning with no signup and no card. Self-Hosted Pro is $15 a month, or $9 a month billed yearly, and unlocks all eight scanners plus compliance profiles (SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, and more) while keeping code entirely on your machine. Cloud is $29 a month for hosted scanning and trend analytics. Team is $99 a month for 25 seats with SSO.
Put that next to a $100,000 enterprise contract and the comparison stops being about features. It is about who the tool was built for.
Setup
# Free tier, no signup, no config
npx safeweave-mcp
# Claude Code
claude mcp add safeweave -- npx -y safeweave-mcp
I have been running SafeWeave across my projects because it fits the way I actually work, which is fast, solo, and AI-first. If you are an enterprise with a security org and a procurement team, Snyk or Checkmarx may be the right call. If you are shipping AI-generated code on your own and you want the vulnerabilities caught before they land, you should not have to pay enterprise prices to get there.
Top comments (0)