Bandit vs Flawfinder
Bandit
github.com
Flawfinder
dwheeler.comSide by side
| Figure | Bandit | Flawfinder |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | — | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 2 | 1 |
| Spec score · SAST Tools | 9.0 (#1) | 8.1 (#9) |
| Spec score · Static Application Security Testing Software | 9.0 (#1) | 8.1 (#8) |
| Installation | The documented primary installation method is pip, with optional extras for TOML, baseline, and SARIF support. | The site documents installation with pip, direct source download, and distribution packages; it requires Python 2.7 or Python 3. |
| Integrations | Official integration documentation lists VS Code, Sublime Text, Vim/Neovim, Emacs, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Ruff, and Flake8. | The site describes CSV output as useful for integrating with other tools and also offers SARIF output in JSON format. |
| License | The project is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. | Flawfinder is released under GNU General Public License version 2 or later, with SPDX expression GPL-2.0+. |
| Purpose | Bandit scans Python code to find common security issues by building an AST and running plugins against its nodes. | Flawfinder examines C/C++ source code and reports possible security weaknesses sorted by risk level. |
| Support | The documentation links to the GitHub issue tracker and a Bandit Discord community. | The project directs general questions to its mailing list and specific bugs or feature requests to git or the issue tracker on SourceForge. |
Plans
In their own words
Bandit
Bandit is free software for finding common security issues in Python source code. It builds an abstract syntax tree from scanned files and runs plugins against that tree, then produces a report. A JSON baseline can exclude findings that a team considers non-issues. The project is distributed through PyPI and recommends installation with pip. It runs on Linux and macOS and can be used in self-hosted environments. Optional installation extras add TOML support, the bandit-baseline command-line tool, and SARIF output formatting. Documentation describes pre-commit configuration and integrations with Visual Studio Code, Sublime Text, Vim, Neovim, Emacs, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Ruff, and Flake8. A published container image supports amd64, arm64, armv7, and armv8 architectures. The project says images are signed with Sigstore Cosign and provides source-verification instructions. Bandit is licensed under Apache License 2.0, with support links to GitHub issues and Discord.
Flawfinder
Flawfinder is a free tool for finding possible security weaknesses in C and C++ source code. It compares source text with a built-in database of functions associated with security problems, generally disregarding comments and strings except for Flawfinder directives. Findings are ordered by risk, which depends on the function and its parameter values; the tool may reduce some false positives when it identifies a construct as not risky. Reports can be generated as text, HTML, CSV, or SARIF. The --patch option narrows findings to changed lines in a unified diff, with a one-line margin. Installation is documented through pip, source downloads, and distribution packages, and the tool requires Python 2.7 or Python 3. The project says it works on Unix-like systems, including GNU/Linux, and on Windows with Cygwin; direct Windows use has also been reported to work. Flawfinder is released under GPL-2.0+. It does not perform control-flow or data-flow analysis, so its output is an aid to review rather than a substitute for security knowledge or human judgment.