Clair vs Trivy

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.

Trivy is a free, Apache-2.0-licensed scanner for code repositories, binary artifacts, container images, and Kubernetes clusters. Its scanners cover vulnerabilities, infrastructure-as-code misconfigurations, secrets, and licenses, and it can generate software bills of materials. Vulnerability checks include operating-system and language-specific packages, some non-packaged software, and Kubernetes components. Configuration checks cover Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CloudFormation files, and users can write custom checks. Trivy supports ecosystems including Ruby, Python, PHP, Node.js, .NET, Java, Go, Rust, C/C++, Elixir, Dart, Swift, Julia, and operating-system packages. It can run as a CI/CD binary without middleware or database dependencies and can be used in air-gapped environments. Installation options include container images, release binaries, package repositories, Homebrew, and Windows downloads; official integrations include Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions. Results can be exported as JUnit XML, SARIF, and ASFF. The vulnerability scanner documentation says third-party or self-compiled packages and binaries are unsupported, and the scanner may skip third-party packages. Trivy automatically fetches and maintains the security databases it needs for scans. The project is identified as Go software under the Apache-2.0 License; Aqua Security is listed as founded in 2015 with headquarters in Boston and Ramat Gan.