MobSF vs Pysa

MobSF is an open-source framework for automated mobile application security testing and penetration testing. Its static analysis examines source code and binaries for security flaws and misconfigurations before execution. Dynamic analysis runs apps in a controlled sandbox to observe runtime behavior, data flow, and API interactions, while malware analysis looks for suspicious code, permissions, and behavior. Supported inputs include Android, iOS, and Windows packages such as APK, XAPK, IPA, and APPX, plus zipped source code. REST APIs connect MobSF with CI/CD or DevSecOps pipelines; named examples include Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI. Reports include severity, affected files or functions, and remediation suggestions, with HTML, PDF, and JSON export options. MobSF can be installed from GitHub or with Docker, runs on Windows, Linux, or macOS, and can operate offline. The Community Edition is open source under GPL v3 and costs nothing. Dynamic analysis is limited to rooted Android versions 4.1 through 11.0, up to API 30; obfuscation and code protection can limit analysis depth.

Pysa is a free, open-source Python static analysis tool that uses taint analysis to identify potential security issues. It follows data from configured sources toward dangerous sinks, such as user-controlled request data reaching an eval call. Users configure sources, sinks, features and rules in taint.config, and annotate code with .pysa model files; built-in and common Python libraries have prewritten models and rules. Sanitizer models describe data that should lose taint, including function parameters and return values. Pysa analyzes the target repository and directories in the configured search_path, but not dependency source outside that scope. When it cannot access a function’s source, it assumes the return value retains taint, which can lead to false positives. Analysis may freeze on similarly sized projects if the machine lacks enough memory. The quickstart installs it with pip install pyre-check in a Python virtual environment. Pyre supports the Language Server Protocol, and a VSCode extension connects to a running server. SAPP can ingest results for viewing and filtering in a local web UI; a GitHub Action can run Pysa in CI and show findings in GitHub’s Security code scanning UI. Pysa requires Python 3.9 or later and relies on type information from Pyrefly. The project says it can analyze codebases with millions of lines. Its repository is MIT-licensed; the Pyre repository was archived on June 26, 2026, and says Pysa moved to its own repository.