Clair vs Google Artifact Analysis
Clair
github.comGoogle Artifact Analysis
cloud.google.comSide by side
| Figure | Clair | Google Artifact Analysis |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | — | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 1 | 2 |
| Spec score · Container Image Scanning Tools | 8.0 (#8) | 7.7 (#10) |
| Purpose | Clair is an open source project for static analysis of vulnerabilities in application containers, including OCI and Docker images. | Artifact Analysis provides software composition analysis and metadata storage and retrieval. |
Plans
Google Artifact Analysis
- Automatic scanning$0.26, paid once
- On-Demand Scanning$0.26, paid once
In their own words
Clair
Clair is a free, Apache 2.0-licensed open-source service for static vulnerability analysis of OCI and Docker container images. It runs self-hosted on Linux and exposes an API: clients submit image manifests, Clair indexes their layers, scans image contents, and returns a persisted IndexReport. Analysis examines image contents rather than runtime behavior. Content-addressed OCI manifests and layers help avoid duplicate indexing. Clair continually ingests security data, while matcher requests provide current vulnerability analysis for an IndexReport; its notifier checks indexed manifests when new vulnerabilities appear and follows configured actions. The documented support matrix includes Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, SUSE, Oracle, Alpine, AWS Linux, VMware Photon, and Python base containers. Clair v4 uses ClairCore as its analysis engine. Release 4.9.0 notes NVD 2.0 JSON feeds for CVSS enrichment and SPDX 2.3 encoding for index reports. The README lists a mailing list, IRC channel, and GitHub issues for community contact, and directs users to releases because the main branch may be unstable or broken. The listed plan is free.
Google Artifact Analysis
Google Artifact Analysis has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.