detect-secrets vs TruffleHog

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.

TruffleHog scans code repositories and other sources for exposed secrets, passwords, and sensitive keys. It checks version history across branches and can find credentials in comments and Docker images, among other locations. For detected credentials, it checks the relevant protocol or API to determine whether they are live, helping reduce false positives. Its Analyze feature identifies the resources and permissions associated with API keys and other secrets without requiring access to a provider’s user interface. Pre-commit and pre-receive hooks can scan changes before they are committed. Alerts can point to credential-rotation actions and security guidance. Integrations include GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, Gerrit, Docker, Jenkins, Slack, Teams, Jira, Confluence, Google Drive, S3, and SharePoint, among others. Notifications can go to Slack, Jira, Splunk, webhooks, email, or stdout. The open-source plan costs nothing and includes 800+ secret detectors.