Five SAST tools, five philosophies. KCode's pitch: fewer false positives (LLM-verified), deterministic one-command fixes, and source that truly never leaves your machine.
Last updated 2026-04. Features change — the axes below are what we think matter. Counter-evidence welcome.
Scanner + verifier
Deterministic regex + AST scanner. Small local LLM verifies each candidate to strip FPs. /fix ships patches, not just flags.
Rule-based scanner
~2000 OSS rules + commercial catalog. Lightweight, fast, great community. Optional cloud dashboard (Semgrep Cloud Platform).
Dataflow queries
GitHub-owned. Strongest dataflow analysis of the five — can chase a taint across a codebase. OSS-research license.
DeepCode + SCA
Integrated platform: SAST + SCA + IaC + container. Commercial polish. Uses a hosted model for analysis.
Quality + security
Legacy code's best friend. Strongest on code smells, tech debt, and coverage metrics. Self-host or cloud.
KCode column in cyan. Columns are alphabetical after that. Em-dash = not a product goal.
| Feature | KCode | CodeQL | Semgrep | Snyk Code | SonarQube |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing (team of 10 devs) | $0 (AGPL) or $190/mo Pro | $0 (GH Advanced Security for OSS / $49/committer/mo private) | $0 (OSS) or $400/mo (Team) | $580/mo ($58/dev) | $1,500/yr (Developer), self-host |
| Source ever leaves your machine? | No — scanner + verifier both local | CLI local; dashboard cloud | CLI local; Cloud Platform optional | Yes — hosted analysis engine | No (self-host) / Yes (SonarCloud) |
| LLM-verified findings | Yes — strips FPs before they reach the report | — | — | Uses DeepCode AI (cloud-side) | — |
| Auto-fix (not just flag) | /fix — deterministic patches per pattern | — | autofix on select rules | DeepCode AI Fix (cloud) | — |
| Tokens / cost per run | ~10k (local LLM) | N/A (dataflow, no LLM) | N/A | Opaque (hosted) | N/A |
| Rule / pattern count | 256 curated | 3,000+ queries | 2,000+ OSS rules | Not published | 3,000+ rules (security + quality) |
| Languages covered | 20+ (C, Rust, Go, Python, Java, JS, …) | ~10 (C/C++, C#, Go, Java, JS/TS, Python, Ruby, Swift) | 30+ | ~15 | 30+ |
| Output format | SARIF v2.1.0 + Markdown | SARIF | SARIF + JSON | SARIF + JSON | SARIF (via plugin) + internal |
| CI integration (one-line) | GitHub Action | GitHub Action (native) | GitHub Action + CLI | GitHub Action + CLI | Plugin per CI |
| License | AGPL-3.0 (dual-license available) | Proprietary; free for OSS research | LGPL-2.1 (rules often Commons Clause) | Proprietary | LGPL-3.0 (Community) / Commercial |
| NASA-validated | PR #107 on nasa/IDF | — | — | — | — |
Privacy-critical codebases, air-gapped dev, teams tired of FP noise, C/Rust/Go-heavy repos, bring-your-own-hardware economics.
You need deep dataflow across a huge codebase. Complex taint analysis. Already on GitHub Advanced Security.
You want to write your own rules in a familiar syntax. Polyglot monorepos. CI-as-code culture.
You want one vendor for SAST + SCA + IaC + container. Compliance / SOC2 reporting built-in.
Legacy codebase quality + security together. Coverage + duplication + smells + CWE in one dashboard.
Not a dataflow engine. CodeQL wins on cross-function taint tracking. KCode is regex + AST + semantic guards + LLM verification — it catches the 256 bug classes it knows about, but it won't trace a tainted string across 15 functions.
Not a compliance suite. Snyk and SonarQube have polished SOC2 / PCI / GDPR reporting. KCode emits SARIF; if your auditor wants a branded dashboard, use one of those instead (or on top).
Not the largest rule catalog. Semgrep has ~2,000 OSS rules; KCode has 256 curated ones. We chose depth over breadth — every KCode pattern ships with positive + negative fixtures and survives a CI regression harness.
Not free-of-charge for commercial use at scale. AGPL-3.0 means your SaaS product can use it freely, but if you want to embed KCode in a proprietary offering without publishing the modifications, you need a commercial license ([email protected]).