Checkov vs Molecule
Checkov
checkov.ioMolecule
docs.ansible.comSide by side
| Figure | Checkov | Molecule |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| macOS | Yes | — |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 0 |
| Spec score · Infrastructure Testing Tools | 8.0 (#10) | 7.1 (#23) |
| CI integrations | The documentation describes integrations with Jenkins, Bitbucket Cloud Pipelines, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI. | The documentation provides continuous integration examples for GitHub Actions, Travis CI, GitLab CI, Azure Pipelines, Jenkins Pipeline, and Tox. |
| Installation | The project documents installation through pip and Homebrew; Homebrew is specified for macOS or Linux. | The documentation names pip as the only supported installation method and recommends installing Molecule through the ansible-dev-tools package. |
| License | The Checkov GitHub repository identifies its license as Apache-2.0. | The project GitHub page identifies Molecule as MIT licensed. |
| Purpose | Checkov scans infrastructure-as-code files for misconfigurations that can cause security or compliance problems. | Molecule is an Ansible testing framework for developing and testing collections, playbooks, and roles. |
| Support | The project directs users to its documentation for tutorials and examples and identifies Prisma Cloud as the maintainer. | The project directs users to the Ansible community forum for questions and help, and says possible security bugs can be reported to [email protected]. |
Plans
In their own words
Checkov
Checkov is a free tool for scanning infrastructure-as-code files for configuration problems that could affect security or compliance. Its documented targets include Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM, Serverless, Helm, Kubernetes, and Docker. The policy library contains more than 750 predefined checks, including checks for standards such as CIS and the AWS Foundations Benchmark. Checkov can also identify common credentials in IaC files, including AWS access keys, Azure service credentials, and private keys. Teams can create custom attribute policies in Python or YAML and composite policies in YAML. Documented continuous-integration integrations include Jenkins, Bitbucket Cloud Pipelines, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI. Add-ons for Visual Studio Code and JetBrains provide real-time scanning and inline fixes. Installation is documented through pip and Homebrew, with Homebrew specified for macOS or Linux. The project supports Python 3.9 through 3.13 and is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license. Prisma Cloud extends Checkov with runtime scanning, visibility, native VCS integrations, drift detection, and pull request annotations. Alpine is not officially tested or supported; it requires Python 3.11 or later.
Molecule
Molecule has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.