Brakeman vs gosec
Brakeman
brakemanscanner.orggosec
github.comSide by side
| Figure | Brakeman | gosec |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | — | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Static Application Security Testing Sast | 8.0 (#7) | 8.6 (#3) |
| Spec score · Static Analysis Tools | 8.0 (#14) | 8.6 (#7) |
| Spec score · SAST Tools | 8.0 (#10) | 8.6 (#4) |
| Spec score · Static Application Security Testing Software | 7.9 (#11) | 8.6 (#4) |
| False positives | The documentation cautions that Brakeman can produce false positives because it can only guess at the meaning of application code. | The documentation says automated detection can produce false positives and supports code annotations to suppress verified safe findings. |
| Purpose | Brakeman is a static analysis scanner that checks Ruby on Rails application code for potential security vulnerabilities. | gosec inspects Go source code for security problems by scanning its AST and SSA code representation. |
| Reports | It can output text, HTML, JSON, JUnit XML, and Markdown reports; JSON is recommended for automation. | Supported output formats include text, JSON, YAML, CSV, JUnit XML, HTML, SonarQube, golint, and SARIF. |
Plans
In their own words
Brakeman
Brakeman has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.
gosec
gosec is a free Go source-code security checker that analyzes abstract syntax trees and static single assignment representations. It applies pattern rules, SSA analyzers, and taint analysis to detect issues including injection, path traversal, SSRF, unsafe deserialization, cryptography and TLS problems, blocklisted imports, and Go-specific risks. Findings map to Common Weakness Enumeration entries. Users can select or exclude rules, define path-based exclusions, and change settings such as audit mode. Reports are available as text, JSON, YAML, CSV, JUnit XML, HTML, SonarQube, golint, and SARIF. The project documents GitHub Actions and SARIF uploads to GitHub code scanning; its goanalysis package supports tools such as Bazel nogo. Local installation requires Go 1.25 or newer, with dependencies loaded through Go modules. An optional AI feature suggests fixes through Atlas Cloud, Gemini, Claude, OpenAI, or custom OpenAI-compatible APIs. Automated detection can produce false positives, which annotations can suppress. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0.