FOSSA vs SW360

FOSSA scans software projects for dependencies, vulnerabilities, and license issues across the development lifecycle. Its open-source dependency analysis covers more than 30 languages, and its policy engine can enforce organization-wide license, security, and quality requirements, including build-blocking rules. Teams can generate, import, export, and manage software bills of materials (SBOMs). Scanning options include CLI and CI/CD workflows, container analysis, snippet detection, Quick Import from code hosts, and enterprise binary and SBOM uploads. Quick Import scans source without running the build, so its results are less complete than a CLI scan. Documented integrations include Jira, GitHub, Slack, Bitbucket, GitLab, APIs, and OIDC providers. FOSSA offers web, Linux, API, and self-hosted options; customers can operate its on-premises deployment using Kubernetes and Helm. Free includes five projects, 10 contributing developers, and five imported SBOMs. Business is listed at $2,020,710 a year; Enterprise pricing is custom and not listed.

SW360 is an open-source catalogue and repository for organizing software component information across an organization. It records components, releases, and projects, manages license information and obligations, and supports workflows that produce license-related documents. Software Bill of Materials management is listed as a use case, with SPDX RDF/XML and CycloneDX import formats. SW360 also collects vulnerability information and matches it with components in its component service. A REST API exposes its functions, with documented HTTP Basic, API token, OAuth2, and Keycloak authentication options. The recommended version 20 deployment uses Docker- or Podman-compatible containers for the frontend, Keycloak, CouchDB, and Spring Boot backend. SW360 can trigger FOSSology clearing and import its reports, while FOSSology performs license scanning. SW360 itself does not scan licenses or source code. The project is free, licensed under EPL-2.0, and designed for self-managed deployment. Version 20.1.0 is listed as dated July 29, 2026.