Penthera and Snyk

Pro. For “how does Penthera compare to Snyk, and how do I run both?”

Last checked: 2026-10-19 against Snyk’s public docs, pricing page and GitHub.

Use them together

Snyk is a developer security platform built around a curated vulnerability database: it tells you which of your dependencies, containers and infrastructure files have known issues, across many languages, and opens fix pull requests. Penthera asks different questions: what can a package do (not only which CVEs it has), how does the running app behave, and what is in your AI tooling config. It does this offline and without an account. A reasonable setup: Snyk for known-vulnerability coverage across your stack. Penthera for the behavior diff on lockfile changes, the scan of your preview URL before a deploy, and the agent-config audit.

Side by side

	Penthera	Snyk
Dependencies	What each npm and Python package can do (install scripts, shell, network, env, obfuscation), what an upgrade added, typosquats, licenses	Known vulnerabilities and licenses across 13+ package ecosystems (supported languages)
Your code	Route discovery, trust boundaries and secrets for JS/TS frameworks	Snyk Code static analysis in 16 languages (supported languages)
Running app	URL scan (headers, TLS, CORS, auth, JWT, IDOR, OAuth, OpenAPI; opt-in injection and fuzzing)	Snyk API & Web, a DAST product on Enterprise plans (plans)
Containers, IaC	No	Yes (CLI)
AI tooling	`penthera agents`: skills, MCP servers, hooks, permissions, plugins, rule files, checked locally	Snyk Agent Scan: MCP servers and skills, sends component metadata to Snyk’s API and needs a token (agent-scan)
Account	None	Required for the CLI (authenticate)
Fixes	Deterministic recipes as local diffs, re-scanned to verify; never pushes	Fix pull requests through SCM integrations (fix PRs)
Editor	Through your coding agent (Agent Skill)	Plugins for VS Code, JetBrains, Visual Studio, Eclipse (IDE)
License	MIT	CLI is Apache-2.0 (repo); the platform is commercial
Cost	Free	Free plan with 5 projects and 100 Snyk Code tests a month; Team from $25 a month (plans)

Where Snyk goes further

Curated vulnerability data across many languages, with advisories written and maintained by a research team. Penthera does not track CVEs for your dependencies beyond the vendored Retire.js database for front-end scripts.
Breadth: containers, infrastructure as code, many more languages.
Reachability analysis to cut a CVE list down to what you call.
Organization features: dashboards, policies across many repos, reporting.

Where Penthera adds something

Behavior, not only known issues. A new install script or a package that suddenly reads your whole environment shows up even when no CVE exists yet.
The running app, free, on localhost.
Fully local. No account and no vendor API. Nothing about your code leaves the machine, and --offline limits traffic to the scan target. The AI-tooling audit is local too.
EU evidence: NIS2 readiness, CRA report drafts, SBOM and AI-BOM, and a signable evidence bundle.

Run both

snyk test                               # known vulnerabilities in dependencies
npx penthera deps --base origin/main    # what the new packages can do
npx penthera http://localhost:3000 --repo .

Both write SARIF, so both can upload to GitHub code scanning. All comparisons · Back to the README

I'm new

I use AI coding tools

I run it in CI

Evidence for an auditor

Research and method

Compared

The project

Snyk

Penthera and Snyk

Use them together

Side by side

Where Snyk goes further

Where Penthera adds something

Run both

​Penthera and Snyk

​Use them together

​Side by side

​Where Snyk goes further

​Where Penthera adds something

​Run both

Penthera and Snyk

Use them together

Side by side

Where Snyk goes further

Where Penthera adds something

Run both