Is Semgrep Free? Understanding OSS vs Semgrep Cloud in 2026

The short answer: Semgrep is free - with limits

Yes, Semgrep is free. The core scanning engine is open source under the LGPL-2.1 license, and you can install it, run it, and integrate it into your CI/CD pipeline without creating an account, without paying anything, and without any usage restrictions. If all you need is a fast, pattern-based static analysis tool that runs locally with community-maintained rules, Semgrep costs nothing.

But the full story is more nuanced than that. Semgrep in 2026 is really two products under one name. There is Semgrep OSS - the free command-line scanner with single-file analysis and 2,800+ community rules. And there is the Semgrep Cloud Platform - a commercial application security product with cross-file analysis, 20,000+ proprietary Pro rules, software composition analysis, secrets detection, AI-powered triage, and a centralized management dashboard. The Cloud Platform costs $35 per contributor per month on the Team plan, with custom pricing for Enterprise.

The distinction matters because the capabilities that most security teams actually need - cross-file dataflow tracking, managed rule sets, SCA with reachability analysis, and automated triage - live on the paid side of that divide. Independent testing shows that the free CLI detects roughly 44-48% of vulnerabilities, while the paid Pro engine catches 72-75%. That gap represents real security coverage you either pay for or accept as a limitation.

This guide breaks down exactly what Semgrep gives you for free, what costs money, how the Semgrep pricing tiers work, and when you should consider free alternatives instead.

What Semgrep OSS gives you for free

The Semgrep open-source CLI is not a crippled trial version. It is a genuinely capable static analysis scanner that thousands of teams run in production. Here is what you get at zero cost with no login required.

The full scanning engine

The Semgrep CLI installs in seconds via pip, brew, or Docker. It scans code at a median speed of approximately 10 seconds for most codebases, which makes it fast enough to run on every pull request without slowing down developer workflows. The engine supports over 30 programming languages including Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Java, Go, Ruby, C, C++, C#, PHP, Kotlin, Rust, Swift, Scala, Terraform, and Dockerfile.

The scanning engine is the same binary that powers the commercial platform. The difference is not in the engine itself but in which analysis modes are enabled. The free CLI runs single-file and single-function pattern matching - it analyzes each file independently without tracing data flows across file boundaries. This is a meaningful limitation that we will cover in detail, but within the scope of single-file analysis, the engine is fully capable and identical to what paying customers use.

2,800+ community rules

The Semgrep Registry contains approximately 2,800 community-contributed rules covering common vulnerability patterns, security anti-patterns, and coding standard violations. These rules are freely available, openly documented in YAML, and can be used with both the free CLI and the paid platform.

Community rules cover the OWASP Top 10 vulnerability categories for popular languages and frameworks. You can find rules for SQL injection in Django, XSS in React, command injection in Node.js, insecure deserialization in Java, and dozens of other common vulnerability patterns. The rule quality varies - some are battle-tested and highly accurate, while others produce excessive false positives or are too narrow to catch real-world variants - but the core coverage for mainstream stacks is solid.

Custom rule authoring

This is Semgrep's defining feature, and it works identically in the free tier. You can write custom rules in YAML that use Semgrep's pattern syntax to match code structures. The pattern language supports metavariables (capturing arbitrary expressions), pattern combinators (AND, OR, NOT logic), and taint tracking within single files. Writing a Semgrep rule that detects a specific insecure API call in your codebase takes minutes, not hours.

For teams that need to enforce organization-specific coding standards - banning deprecated APIs, requiring specific logging patterns, enforcing architectural boundaries - the custom rule system is the primary reason to use Semgrep, and it is completely free. Our Semgrep custom rules guide covers how to write effective rules from scratch.

CI/CD integration

The CLI runs in any pipeline that supports command-line tools. You can integrate it with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, Bitbucket Pipelines, Azure Pipelines, or any other CI system. Output formats include SARIF (for GitHub Security tab integration), JSON, and human-readable text. Setting up Semgrep in CI takes less than five minutes for most pipelines - our Semgrep GitHub Action guide walks through the GitHub Actions setup step by step.

No usage limits

There are no caps on the number of scans, repositories, lines of code, or developers using the free CLI. You can scan every repository in your organization on every commit without hitting any threshold or being asked to upgrade. This is genuinely unlimited free scanning - the constraint is capability (single-file analysis, community rules only), not volume.

What the free CLI does NOT include

The gap between free Semgrep and paid Semgrep is not about convenience features or nice-to-have dashboards. It is about fundamental scanning capabilities that directly affect how many vulnerabilities the tool catches.

No cross-file dataflow analysis

This is the most impactful limitation. The free CLI analyzes each file in isolation. It cannot trace data flowing from a user input in one file through a service layer in another file to a dangerous sink in a third file. In real-world applications - particularly enterprise codebases with multiple service layers, dependency injection, and complex inheritance hierarchies - the majority of security-relevant data flows cross file boundaries.

The practical impact is measurable. In independent testing, the free CLI with community rules detected 44-48% of vulnerabilities in standard test suites. The paid Pro engine with cross-file analysis detected 72-75%. That 25-30 percentage point gap represents vulnerabilities like cross-file SQL injection, SSRF through indirect routes, and authentication bypass through multi-layer data transformation that single-file analysis simply cannot see.

For simple applications where most logic lives within individual files - small Express.js APIs, Flask microservices, or scripts - the gap is narrower. For enterprise applications with deep service layering, the gap is a genuine security concern.

No Pro rules

The 20,000+ Pro rules maintained by Semgrep's in-house security research team are exclusively available on the paid Team and Enterprise plans. Pro rules leverage cross-file analysis capabilities, cover framework-specific patterns in depth (Django ORM injection, Spring Boot deserialization chains, React dangerouslySetInnerHTML patterns), and are maintained with consistent quality standards and regular updates.

The community rules are not a substitute for Pro rules - they are a different tier of coverage. Community rules cover the basics well, but they have inconsistent maintenance, variable false positive rates, and limited coverage for less popular frameworks.

No Semgrep Supply Chain

Software composition analysis with reachability is a paid-only feature. Semgrep Supply Chain goes beyond basic dependency scanning by determining whether vulnerable functions in your dependencies are actually called by your application code. This dramatically reduces the noise compared to traditional SCA tools that flag every dependency with a known CVE regardless of reachability.

If you need SCA on the free tier, you would need a separate tool like Dependabot, Trivy, or OWASP Dependency Check - none of which offer Semgrep Supply Chain's reachability analysis.

No Semgrep Secrets

Semantic credential detection and validation is paid-only. Semgrep Secrets identifies hardcoded credentials, API keys, tokens, and passwords using context-aware analysis rather than simple regex matching. The validation feature checks whether detected credentials are still active, helping teams prioritize remediation for credentials that pose an immediate risk.

No AI-powered triage

The Semgrep Assistant - which uses machine learning to classify findings as true or false positives with confidence scores and natural-language explanations - is available only on the paid platform. Semgrep reports that Assistant handles approximately 60% of all triage work for customers. Without it, every finding from the free CLI requires manual evaluation, which can be time-consuming for teams with large codebases and high finding volumes.

No centralized dashboard or finding management

The free CLI outputs results to the terminal or to files. There is no web-based dashboard, no centralized finding management, no remediation tracking, no trending metrics, and no managed PR comments. You can upload SARIF files to GitHub's Security tab for some visualization, but you do not get the purpose-built AppSec Platform dashboard that the paid tiers provide.

Semgrep Cloud Platform - the free tier vs paid plans

The Semgrep Cloud Platform (formerly known as Semgrep App) is the commercial product built on top of the open-source engine. It is important to understand how the platform's own free tier differs from the open-source CLI.

Cloud free tier - full platform for up to 10 contributors

Semgrep offers the full Cloud Platform - including cross-file analysis, Pro rules, Supply Chain, Secrets, and the AI Assistant - at no cost for teams with up to 10 contributors and 10 private repositories. This is one of the most generous free tiers in the application security market.

If your team has 10 or fewer active contributors, there is no pricing decision to make. You get the entire commercial platform for free. This effectively serves as Semgrep's startup and small team program, and it makes Semgrep an easy default choice for teams under the threshold.

The contributor count is based on people who commit code to monitored repositories, typically measured over the last 30 days. Developers who only review PRs but do not commit are generally not counted. CI bots and automated committers may or may not count depending on configuration.

Team plan - $35 per contributor per month

Once your team exceeds 10 contributors, the Team plan kicks in at $35 per contributor per month. This price covers the full platform - Semgrep Code (SAST with cross-file analysis), Semgrep Supply Chain (SCA with reachability), Semgrep Secrets, and the AI-powered Semgrep Assistant.

For a 25-developer team, the annual cost is approximately $10,500 (25 x $35 x 12). For a 50-developer team, it is approximately $21,000 per year. The pricing is per contributor, not per repository or per scan, which makes it predictable and monorepo-friendly.

What the Team plan includes beyond the free threshold:

• Cross-file and cross-function dataflow analysis on the Pro engine
• 20,000+ Pro rules maintained by Semgrep's security research team
• Semgrep Supply Chain with reachability analysis
• Semgrep Secrets with active credential validation
• Semgrep Assistant (AI-powered triage with ~95% agreement rate on auto-triage decisions)
• Assistant Memories for organization-specific context learning
• Centralized AppSec Platform dashboard
• Managed PR integration with automated comments and configurable merge blocking
• Diff-aware scanning for fast PR feedback

For a deeper breakdown of every pricing tier and cost comparison with competitors, see our Semgrep pricing guide.

Enterprise plan - custom pricing

The Enterprise plan adds organizational controls on top of the Team plan. Features include SSO/SAML integration, custom deployment options (including air-gapped environments), advanced compliance reporting, role-based access control, dedicated support with SLA guarantees, and priority feature requests. Pricing is custom and negotiated with Semgrep's sales team.

The Enterprise plan is justified by organizational requirements - mandatory SSO policies, data residency restrictions, regulatory compliance mandates - rather than additional scanning capabilities. The security analysis is identical to the Team plan.

Community rules vs Pro rules - what you actually miss

The difference between Semgrep's free community rules and the paid Pro rules is one of the most misunderstood aspects of the free versus paid divide. The gap is not just about rule count - 2,800 versus 20,000+ - but about detection methodology, maintenance quality, and real-world effectiveness.

Community rules are contributed by the open-source community. Many are excellent, particularly for common patterns in popular languages. But quality varies significantly. Some rules are well-tested and maintained. Others produce excessive false positives, cover overly narrow patterns, or have not been updated when frameworks change their APIs. There is no curation guarantee - you need to evaluate each rule's effectiveness for your specific codebase.

Pro rules are written and maintained by Semgrep's dedicated security research team. They leverage cross-file analysis capabilities that community rules running on the free engine cannot use. They are designed for high-precision detection with minimal noise. They cover framework-specific vulnerability patterns in depth - understanding, for example, how Django's ORM can be vulnerable to SQL injection even through the ORM abstraction layer, or how Spring Boot's deserialization handling creates exploitable attack surfaces across service boundaries.

The practical impact: if you run the free CLI with community rules against a complex codebase, you will catch common patterns like obvious SQL injection, hardcoded passwords, and basic XSS. You will miss subtler vulnerabilities that require cross-file taint tracking, framework-specific knowledge, or deep pattern matching across function calls. The 25-30 percentage point detection gap between free and paid Semgrep represents these missed vulnerabilities.

For teams that use Semgrep primarily for custom rule enforcement - checking for specific patterns unique to their codebase - the community rules gap matters less because you are writing your own rules anyway. For teams relying on Semgrep's out-of-the-box rules for security coverage, the Pro rules provide meaningfully better detection. You can learn more about writing your own rules to fill gaps in our Semgrep custom rules guide, or follow the Semgrep CLI tutorial to get started with the free engine.

Who should use the free version

The free Semgrep OSS CLI and the free Cloud tier serve different audiences. Understanding which category you fall into determines whether free Semgrep is a viable long-term choice or a stepping stone to the paid platform.

Teams under 10 contributors

If your team has 10 or fewer active contributors, use the free Cloud Platform tier. You get the full commercial product - cross-file analysis, Pro rules, Supply Chain, Secrets, AI Assistant, dashboard - at zero cost. There is no reason to limit yourself to the OSS CLI when the complete platform is available for free.

Supplementary scanner alongside other tools

If your primary SAST tool is SonarQube, Snyk Code, or another platform, and you use Semgrep specifically for custom rules that check patterns unique to your codebase, the free CLI is sufficient. The custom rule authoring system works identically in the free tier. Single-file analysis is adequate for targeted pattern matching, and you are not relying on Semgrep for comprehensive vulnerability detection.

Coding standard enforcement

Semgrep excels at enforcing coding standards - banning deprecated APIs, requiring specific error handling patterns, enforcing naming conventions, checking for insecure configuration patterns. These rules typically operate within single files and do not need cross-file analysis. The free CLI handles this use case perfectly, and many teams use Semgrep exclusively for this purpose.

Small codebases with simple architecture

In a codebase where most functions are self-contained within files and data flows are straightforward, the gap between single-file and cross-file analysis is smaller. A simple Flask API with route handlers that directly call database functions in the same file will have more vulnerabilities caught by single-file analysis than a complex Spring Boot application with deep service layering.

Evaluation before purchase

The free tier is an excellent way to validate Semgrep's detection quality against your codebase before committing to the Team plan. Install the CLI, run it in CI, write a few custom rules, and assess whether the findings are actionable. Then make a data-driven decision about upgrading.

Who should pay for Semgrep Cloud

The paid Team plan is justified when the capabilities it adds translate directly into better security outcomes for your team. Here are the clearest indicators that the free tier is not enough.

Teams with more than 10 contributors

This is the most straightforward trigger. Once you exceed the free threshold, you either pay $35 per contributor per month or drop back to the OSS CLI with significantly reduced capabilities. For teams at 11-15 contributors, the annual cost is relatively modest ($4,620-6,300/year) and the capability uplift from cross-file analysis and Pro rules is substantial.

Complex multi-file codebases

Enterprise applications with service layers, dependency injection, complex inheritance, and data transformation pipelines need cross-file analysis to detect vulnerabilities effectively. If your application architecture means data routinely crosses file boundaries - which is true for virtually every non-trivial application - the free CLI's single-file limitation creates a meaningful security gap.

Teams relying on Semgrep as primary SAST

If Semgrep is your primary (or only) static analysis security tool, the 44-48% detection rate of the free tier is a significant coverage gap. Missing over half of detectable vulnerabilities means your security program has a substantial blind spot. The Team plan's 72-75% detection rate, while not perfect, provides dramatically better coverage. For teams evaluating other SAST options as well, our best SAST tools guide covers the full landscape.

Need for SCA or secrets detection

If your security requirements include software composition analysis or credential detection, and you want those capabilities integrated with your SAST workflow rather than managed as separate tools, the Team plan bundles all three - SAST, SCA, and Secrets - in a single subscription. This bundling can be more cost-effective than paying for separate standalone tools.

High finding volumes causing triage fatigue

If your security team spends more time triaging false positives than remediating real issues, the AI Assistant's automated triage (handling approximately 60% of triage work with 95% agreement rates) can recover significant engineering time. For teams with hundreds of findings per week, the human cost of manual triage often exceeds the subscription cost of the Team plan.

Free alternatives to Semgrep

If Semgrep's free tier does not meet your needs and the paid plan is outside your budget, several alternatives provide meaningful security scanning at no cost. For a comprehensive comparison, see our Semgrep alternatives guide.

SonarQube Community Build

SonarQube's free, self-hosted Community Build provides over 5,000 rules across 30+ languages covering both code quality and security. It is more comprehensive than Semgrep's community rules for general code quality analysis. The trade-off is that SonarQube's Community Build lacks branch analysis and pull request decoration - it can only scan the main branch. Custom rule authoring requires Java expertise rather than Semgrep's developer-friendly YAML syntax.

For teams that need code quality analysis alongside security, SonarQube Community Build covers both at zero cost. For teams that need only security scanning with custom rules, Semgrep's free CLI remains the stronger choice.

CodeQL on GitHub

GitHub's CodeQL provides deep semantic code analysis with cross-file dataflow tracking - the same capability that is paid in Semgrep. CodeQL is free for public repositories on GitHub.com and for GitHub Advanced Security subscribers. The query language (QL) is more expressive than Semgrep's pattern syntax but has a steeper learning curve.

If your codebase is on GitHub and you have access to GitHub Advanced Security, CodeQL provides cross-file SAST analysis that competes directly with Semgrep's paid Pro engine - at no additional cost beyond your existing GitHub subscription.

Language-specific free scanners

For specific languages, free open-source scanners can complement or replace Semgrep's community rules:

• Bandit for Python security scanning
• ESLint with security plugins (eslint-plugin-security, eslint-plugin-no-unsanitized) for JavaScript/TypeScript
• SpotBugs with Find Security Bugs for Java
• Brakeman for Ruby on Rails
• Gosec for Go

These tools are narrower in scope but deeper in their respective languages. Combining two or three language-specific scanners with Semgrep's free CLI for custom rules can provide respectable security coverage without any paid subscriptions.

CodeAnt AI

CodeAnt AI takes a different approach - AI-powered code review that covers security, code quality, and anti-pattern detection across 30+ languages. Starting at $24 per user per month (with enterprise plans at $40 per user per month), CodeAnt AI is more affordable than Semgrep's Team plan and provides broader code review coverage including AI-generated fix suggestions. It is not a direct Semgrep replacement for teams that need custom rule authoring, but for teams that want automated code review with security scanning included, it offers strong value at a lower price point.

Trivy for SCA

If you need software composition analysis without paying for Semgrep Supply Chain, Trivy is a free, open-source scanner that covers container images, file systems, and Git repositories for vulnerabilities in OS packages and language dependencies. It does not offer Semgrep Supply Chain's reachability analysis, but it provides solid baseline SCA coverage at zero cost.

When free Semgrep stops being enough

Most teams start with the free tier and eventually reach a point where the limitations become costly. Here are the common inflection points that trigger an upgrade decision.

Vulnerability discovered in production that single-file analysis missed. When a security incident reveals a cross-file taint vulnerability - SQL injection through a service layer, SSRF through an indirect HTTP client call, or authentication bypass through a multi-step data transformation - the cost of the Team plan becomes trivially small compared to the cost of the incident. This is the most common (and most expensive) way teams discover that the free tier is insufficient.

Triage backlog growing faster than the team can process. Without AI-powered triage, every finding from the free CLI requires manual evaluation. As your codebase grows and your rule set expands, the volume of findings grows proportionally. When your security team spends more time triaging findings than remediating real issues, the AI Assistant's 60% triage automation pays for itself.

Team growing beyond 10 contributors. The free Cloud Platform threshold is the cleanest trigger. At 11 contributors, you either pay or lose the platform's capabilities. Most teams that have experienced the full platform during their sub-10 phase do not want to go back to CLI-only scanning.

Consolidating security tools. If you are paying separately for SCA (Snyk Open Source, Mend, Black Duck), secrets detection (GitGuardian, TruffleHog Enterprise), and SAST, the Semgrep Team plan's bundled pricing at $35 per contributor per month may be cheaper than the combined cost of individual specialized tools. The consolidation also reduces operational overhead from managing multiple dashboards and triage workflows.

Semgrep free tier vs competitors' free tiers

Understanding how Semgrep's free offering compares to other tools' free tiers helps you choose the right foundation for your security scanning program.

Tool	What is free	Key limitation
Semgrep OSS CLI	Single-file scanning, 2,800+ community rules, unlimited repos	No cross-file analysis, no Pro rules, no SCA/Secrets
Semgrep Cloud (free tier)	Full platform for up to 10 contributors	10 contributor and 10 private repo cap
SonarQube Community Build	5,000+ rules, code quality + security, unlimited users	No branch analysis, no PR decoration, no taint analysis
Snyk Free	1 org, limited scans, SAST + SCA + container	Scan volume limits, limited features
CodeQL (GitHub)	Cross-file analysis on public repos	Requires GitHub, limited to public repos (or GHAS)
DeepSource Free	Code quality + security for 1 user	Single user limit
CodeRabbit Free	AI-powered PR reviews, unlimited repos	No custom review profiles, no priority processing
Trivy	Container + filesystem + repo vulnerability scanning	SCA only, no SAST capability

For teams under 10 contributors, Semgrep's free Cloud Platform tier is the strongest overall offering because it provides the full commercial product at no cost. For teams above 10 contributors looking for free options, the combination of Semgrep OSS CLI (for custom rules), SonarQube Community Build (for code quality), and CodeRabbit Free (for AI PR review) provides broad coverage without spending anything.

Making the right choice for your team

The question "is Semgrep free?" has a clear answer: the OSS CLI is free and always will be. The Cloud Platform is free for small teams and paid for larger ones. The real question is whether the free version - whichever variant applies to your team size - provides sufficient security coverage for your needs.

For teams under 10 contributors, use the free Cloud Platform. You get enterprise-grade security scanning at zero cost. There is no better deal in the application security market.

For teams of 10-25 contributors, the decision comes down to whether the $6,300-10,500 annual cost of the Team plan delivers enough value over the free CLI. If you need cross-file analysis, managed Pro rules, SCA with reachability, secrets detection, or AI-powered triage, the Team plan is well-priced relative to competitors. If you use Semgrep only for custom rule enforcement and have other tools covering comprehensive security scanning, the free CLI may be sufficient.

For teams above 25 contributors, the free CLI alone is almost certainly insufficient as a primary SAST tool. The detection gap is too large, and the operational overhead of managing findings without the platform is too high. The Team plan at $35 per contributor per month is competitive with alternatives and provides strong value through its bundled SAST, SCA, and secrets capabilities. Consider CodeAnt AI at $24-40 per user per month as an alternative if you want AI-powered code review with broader coverage beyond pure SAST.

For enterprise teams with compliance requirements, evaluate whether you need the Enterprise plan's SSO, data residency, and compliance reporting features. If your organization mandates SSO for all developer tools or prohibits sending code to third-party cloud services, the Enterprise plan is your only option within the Semgrep ecosystem.

Regardless of which tier you choose, start with the free CLI to validate Semgrep's approach against your codebase. Install it, run a scan, write a custom rule, and see whether the results are actionable. That hands-on evaluation will tell you more about whether Semgrep is right for your team than any pricing comparison.

For more guidance on getting started, see our Semgrep CLI tutorial for a step-by-step walkthrough of installation, configuration, and first scan.

Further Reading

• Best AI Code Review Tools in 2026 - Expert Picks
• 13 Best Code Quality Tools in 2026 - Platforms, Linters, and Metrics
• 12 Best Free Code Review Tools in 2026 - Open Source and Free Tiers
• I Reviewed 32 SAST Tools - Here Are the Ones Actually Worth Using (2026)
• Best Free Snyk Alternatives for Vulnerability Scanning in 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Semgrep completely free to use?

Semgrep has a free open-source CLI engine licensed under LGPL-2.1 that you can run locally or in CI/CD pipelines with no login, no account, and no usage limits. It includes 2,800+ community rules and single-file pattern matching. Additionally, the full Semgrep Cloud Platform (formerly Semgrep App) is free for up to 10 contributors and 10 private repositories. Beyond that threshold, the Team plan costs $35 per contributor per month and the Enterprise plan uses custom pricing.

What is the difference between Semgrep OSS and Semgrep Cloud?

Semgrep OSS is the free, open-source command-line scanner that runs locally with single-file analysis and 2,800+ community rules. Semgrep Cloud is the commercial platform that adds cross-file and cross-function dataflow analysis, 20,000+ Pro rules, Semgrep Supply Chain (SCA with reachability), Semgrep Secrets (credential detection with validation), the AI-powered Semgrep Assistant for triage, and a centralized AppSec Platform dashboard for managing findings across repositories.

What is included in Semgrep's free tier?

Semgrep's free tier includes two components. First, the open-source CLI with single-file analysis, 2,800+ community rules, support for 30+ languages, custom rule authoring in YAML, and CI/CD integration via command line. Second, the full Semgrep Cloud Platform is free for up to 10 contributors and 10 private repositories - this includes cross-file analysis, Pro rules, Supply Chain, Secrets, and the AI Assistant. Teams under 10 contributors get the complete platform at zero cost.

What are Semgrep community rules vs Pro rules?

Community rules are approximately 2,800 open-source rules contributed by the community and available for free. They cover common vulnerability patterns but vary in quality and maintenance. Pro rules are 20,000+ proprietary rules written and maintained by Semgrep's in-house security research team. Pro rules leverage cross-file analysis, have lower false positive rates, cover framework-specific patterns in depth, and are updated on a regular cadence. Pro rules are only available on the paid Team and Enterprise plans.

How much does Semgrep cost after the free tier?

Once your team exceeds 10 contributors, the Semgrep Team plan costs $35 per contributor per month. For a 25-developer team, that is approximately $10,500 per year. The Enterprise plan has custom pricing and adds SSO/SAML, custom deployment options, advanced compliance reporting, dedicated support, and SLA guarantees. The open-source CLI remains free regardless of team size, but it is limited to single-file analysis with community rules only.

Is the Semgrep open-source CLI enough for production security?

It depends on your codebase and requirements. The free CLI with community rules detects approximately 44-48% of vulnerabilities in standard test suites, compared to 72-75% with the Pro engine and Pro rules. For simple codebases where most logic lives in single files, or for teams using Semgrep as a supplementary scanner alongside other tools, the OSS CLI can be sufficient. For teams relying on Semgrep as their primary SAST tool with complex multi-file codebases, the detection gap is significant enough that the paid platform is recommended.

Does Semgrep Supply Chain cost extra?

No, Semgrep Supply Chain is bundled into the Team plan at $35 per contributor per month with no additional per-product charge. It is not available in the free open-source CLI. Supply Chain provides software composition analysis (SCA) with reachability analysis, which determines whether vulnerable code paths in your dependencies are actually called by your application. This bundling means you get SAST, SCA, and secrets detection in a single subscription.

Can I self-host Semgrep for free?

You can run the open-source Semgrep CLI on your own infrastructure at zero software cost. This gives you single-file analysis with community rules in any CI/CD pipeline. However, the commercial features - cross-file analysis, Pro rules, Supply Chain, Secrets, and the AI Assistant - run through Semgrep's cloud platform and require a paid subscription. Self-hosting the full commercial Semgrep platform is only available on the Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

What are the best free alternatives to Semgrep?

Strong free alternatives include SonarQube Community Build (5,000+ rules, code quality and security, self-hosted), CodeQL on GitHub (free for public repos and GitHub Advanced Security subscribers), ESLint with security plugins (JavaScript/TypeScript), Bandit (Python security), and CodeAnt AI (AI-powered code review starting at $24/user/month with a free trial). For SCA specifically, Dependabot and Trivy are free alternatives to Semgrep Supply Chain. For AI-powered PR reviews, CodeRabbit offers a free tier with unlimited reviews.

Is Semgrep free for open-source projects?

Yes. The open-source CLI is free for everyone with no restrictions. The Semgrep Cloud Platform is also free for open-source projects. Additionally, the platform's free tier for up to 10 contributors and 10 private repositories applies regardless of whether the project is open source or proprietary. Open-source maintainers get full access to the scanning engine, community rules, and - within the free threshold - the complete platform including Pro rules and AI-powered triage.

What happens when I exceed the 10-contributor free limit?

When your team grows beyond 10 contributors, you need to upgrade to the paid Team plan at $35 per contributor per month to continue using the full Semgrep Cloud Platform. If you do not upgrade, you lose access to cross-file analysis, Pro rules, Supply Chain, Secrets, the AI Assistant, and the centralized dashboard. You can still use the free open-source CLI with single-file analysis and community rules. There is no grace period - the transition to paid happens when the contributor threshold is exceeded.

How does Semgrep's free tier compare to Snyk's free tier?

Semgrep's free tier is more generous than Snyk's for small teams. Semgrep offers the full Cloud Platform free for up to 10 contributors and 10 private repos, including cross-file SAST, SCA, and secrets detection. Snyk's free tier is limited to 1 organization with restricted scan counts and fewer features. However, Snyk's free tier has no contributor cap - it limits by scan volume rather than team size. For teams with 10 or fewer contributors, Semgrep's free offering provides more comprehensive capabilities.

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Originally published at aicodereview.cc