Looking for a Semgrep alternative?
Semgrep is an excellent, flexible general-purpose static analyzer. It's also what most AI-coded apps run into first — and frequently misses the specific patterns AI tools ship by default. Here's the honest comparison.
We publish the benchmark. So do the comparisons for yourself.
The XploitScan benchmark page runs both scanners against the same 151-fixture labeled corpus and publishes TP / FP / FN counts for both. The corpus, the runners, and the scoring code are all in the public repo. You can reproduce the numbers locally in about five minutes.
The Semgrep config is pinned to official community rulesets — p/security-audit, p/owasp-top-ten, p/javascript, p/typescript, p/react — so the comparison is reproducible and honest.
When each one fits
Semgrep is great when
- → You want to write custom rules for your own codebase
- → You're already running a polyglot monorepo with Ruby, Go, Java, etc.
- → You have a security engineer to tune signal/noise
- → You're on Semgrep Pro or running an enterprise SAST program
- → You need Semgrep's specific integrations (Jira, SOC, etc.)
XploitScan is great when
- → You're shipping code written primarily with Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, or similar
- → You don't have a security engineer to triage hundreds of findings
- → You want copy-paste fixes, not just rule references
- → You're a solo dev or small team and $19/mo feels right
- → You want to see detection quality measured publicly, not taken on faith
Where the tools actually differ
Rule targeting
Semgrep's community rules are authored for hand-written enterprise code. XploitScan's 158 rules target patterns that specifically appear when AI generates code: Stripe webhooks with no signature verification, mass assignment from destructured req.body, SQL injection via Prisma $queryRawUnsafe, hardcoded OAuth secrets in route files — the failure modes that show up when an LLM writes the happy path and skips the rest.
Fix guidance
Semgrep findings cite a rule ID and a line. XploitScan findings include a one-paragraph explanation of the attack and a specific, copy-paste-ready fix (jwt.sign(payload, process.env.JWT_SECRET) with the specific env var name). If you can't tell from the finding how to fix it, the finding isn't useful.
Taint-aware detection
Many of the rules in XploitScan use a Babel-parsed AST with a local taint tracker (source → sink) so they fire on realistic destructured patterns like const { url } = req.query; await fetch(url), not just inline fetch(req.query.url). Semgrep has taint modes too, but they're Pro features and not in the default community rulesets.
Pricing
Semgrep Community is free. Semgrep Pro and Team are per-committer or quote-based. XploitScan is flat $19/mo for the solo Pro plan, $99/mo for up to 5 seats on Team, and an Indie tier at $9/mo for price-sensitive solo builders. No per-repo fees, no per-committer tiering.
Where Semgrep legitimately wins
- Custom rule authoring. Semgrep's rule syntax is powerful and well-documented. If you need to write a rule specific to your codebase's conventions, Semgrep is the better authoring platform.
- Language breadth. Semgrep covers 30+ languages with active rule development. XploitScan's deepest coverage is JavaScript/TypeScript, Python, and common config formats (Dockerfile, YAML, Terraform).
- Pre-existing integration. Large enterprises running Semgrep with existing dashboards, triage workflows, and SOC integrations should stay on Semgrep.
Try XploitScan on your code
Free, 5 scans/day, no account required. Paste a GitHub URL or drop a zip. See findings in under 10 seconds with copy-paste fixes.