GitHub Secret Scanning vs Horusec

GitHub Secret Scanning detects exposed credentials so they can be secured before exploitation. It scans every branch in Git history, plus issue and pull request content, discussions, wikis, and secret gists. Detected leaks produce repository alerts with details about the credential, while push protection can block secrets before they enter code. Organizations can define regular expressions for their own secret formats. Generic patterns cover items such as private keys, connection strings, and API keys, and AI detection can identify unstructured secrets such as passwords. Validity checks may contact issuing services to see whether credentials remain active. GitHub can work with providers to validate findings and notify them for actions such as revocation. Scanning is automatic and free for public repositories. Private and internal organization repositories require Secret Protection on GitHub Team or Enterprise Cloud; Enterprise Server supports user-owned repositories with that protection. It is available through API, web, and self-hosted deployment, with hybrid deployment.

Horusec is a static code analysis tool for identifying security flaws during development. It scans source code and searches project files and Git history for leaked keys and other security issues. The project describes analyzing 18 languages with 20 security tools; listed coverage includes C#, Java, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, Golang, Terraform, JavaScript, TypeScript, Kubernetes, PHP, C, HTML, JSON, Dart, Elixir, Shell, and Nginx. Analysis is configurable through CLI resources. Developers can use its command-line interface, while DevSecOps teams can add it to CI/CD pipelines; a Visual Studio Code extension is also provided. Horusec-Web offers vulnerability dashboards, false-positive controls, authorization tokens, and vulnerability updates. Horusec Platform integrates with the CLI to visualize and manage vulnerabilities, and supports native Horusec, LDAP, and Keycloak authentication. Its repository was archived by its owner on March 19, 2025 and is read-only. Running Horusec with all its tools requires Docker; the platform requires RabbitMQ and PostgreSQL. The open-source plan is free under Apache License 2.0.