Joern vs Understand
Joern
joern.io
Understand
scitools.comSide by side
| Figure | Joern | Understand |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | — | $100/mo |
| Free plan | — | — |
| Free trial | — | Yes |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 0 | 2 |
| Spec score · Static Analysis Tools | 7.7 (#18) | 8.5 (#9) |
| API | Joern can run as an HTTP server, allowing clients to query code property graphs and delegate graph construction and querying to a server machine. | Understand exposes a Python API for querying its parsed database, automation, custom metrics, reports and CodeCheck rules. |
| Automation | Users can run Joern in non-interactive mode with scripts containing Scala code and Joern directives. | Understand runs from the command line for automation and CI, and an official Docker image is published on Docker Hub. |
| Language support | The documentation lists frontends for C/C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, x86/x64, JVM bytecode, Kotlin, PHP, Go, Ruby, Swift, and C# with varying maturity levels. | Supported languages include C/C++, C#, Fortran, Java, Python, Rust, VHDL, Visual Basic, and web languages including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, and XML. |
Plans
Understand
- Understand subscription$100 a month
- Understand annual subscriptionPrice not published
In their own words
Joern
Joern analyzes source code, bytecode and binary code for vulnerability discovery and static program analysis research. It converts programs into code property graphs, providing a common structure for cross-language analysis. Users query those graphs with a strongly typed, extensible Scala-based domain-specific language. Features include parsing, taint analysis, search queries and passes that extend the graph representation. Joern Scan runs predefined queries and reports matching issues with their locations; queries can be selected by tag or name, and community contributions are accepted in the default database. Queries can be wrapped into custom scanners for CI. Joern also works as a library or through REST and HTTP APIs, including a server for graph construction and querying. Documented frontends cover C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, PHP, Python, Ruby, Swift, x86/x64 and JVM bytecode, with varying maturity. Distributions target Linux, macOS and Windows on x86_64 and ARM64. Joern is free, Apache-2.0 licensed and requires JDK 21.
Understand
Understand is a static analysis and code-comprehension tool from SciTools. It builds a cross-referenced model of source code without executing it, then helps users explore relationships through its Information Browser, call trees, dependency analysis, and visual graphs, including butterfly and control-flow views. It also provides metrics, CodeCheck, version comparison, APIs, a command-line interface, and AI chat. Supported languages include C/C++, C#, Fortran, Java, Python, Rust, VHDL, Visual Basic, and web languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, and XML. It runs on Windows 11, specified Linux distributions, and macOS Monterey or later; command-line automation, CI, and an official Docker image are also available. The VS Code extension is separately licensed. Local AI keeps code and prompts on the user's hardware, while cloud AI sends requests with code context to the selected provider. Offline use is supported with offline licensing. Pricing includes a free plan and paid subscriptions from $100/user/mo (annual).