detect-secrets vs GitGuardian

detect-secrets is a free, open-source Python module for finding secrets in codebases and helping stop new secrets from entering Git changes. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, with self-hosted use documented through pip or Homebrew. Heuristic regular expressions inspect changes for newly committed secrets, alongside entropy and keyword detection. The scan command creates or updates a baseline of potential findings; hook flags new secrets; and audit lets analysts review, label, report, or compare baseline entries. Users can configure it as a pre-commit hook with the pre-commit framework. Built-in plugins and filters can be adjusted, and custom detector plugins and filters can be developed. Exclusions, matching-line or file exclusions, secret-value exclusions, and inline allowlist comments help handle false positives. The package can also be imported into Python scripts to scan files and serialize findings. Word-list filtering and gibberish detection require optional packages, and gibberish detection is disabled by default. The project uses Apache-2.0 licensing.

GitGuardian helps enterprises find leaked secrets and manage non-human identities and AI agent security. Internal Secrets Monitoring looks across code, CI/CD, and collaboration tools, while Public Secrets Monitoring detects secrets exposed on public GitHub. Repository scans can run in real time or historically, and the ggshield command-line tool supports scanning during development, including pre-commit hooks. Listed capabilities also include CI/CD, pull-request, and push-protection scanning, plus custom detection rules. Growth includes remediation playbooks, Slack, Jira, and ServiceNow integrations, AI risk scoring, and false-positive filtering. Enterprise adds non-human identity governance and self-hosted deployment through GitGuardian Bridge, with Helm or KOTS deployment support. Supported version-control systems include GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, and Azure DevOps. Starter is free for up to 25 developers, with unlimited real-time scanning, up to 500 historical scan detections, and 10,000 API calls per month. Growth and Enterprise pricing requires contacting sales; a 30-day trial is listed.