No more typing reviews! Try our Samantha, our new voice AI agent.

FOSSA vs Mend.io comparison

Why PeerSpot?
 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

FOSSA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
11th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.9
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Mend.io
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
35
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (12th), Static Code Analysis (5th), Software Supply Chain Security (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of FOSSA is 2.3%, down from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Mend.io is 4.4%, down from 7.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Mend.io4.4%
FOSSA2.3%
Other93.3%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2588340 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees
Dependency management enhanced with update suggestions but lacks precise vulnerability tracking
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact line numbers for bugs. Also, the process in FOSSA can be quite contradicting and not very straightforward for new users.
meetharoon - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a computer software company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized security monitoring has reduced false positives and improves dependency governance
The only area for improvement I would say is that the false positives are nearly zero; everything is mostly like 99 to 99.99% or we can say 100% accurate. There were a few areas for improvement just from the last time I saw; I think the user experience had a little problem. We wanted to have certain reports based on our kind of scenario, but the tool did not allow us to create custom reports. We had asked for some facility and some ability for us to create some custom reports. That would be awesome if they allow us to create custom reports the way we wanted. There is one small area which I don't know whether we should call a tool limitation or a wish list; if I use a library and I don't use all the capabilities of the library but only a portion of it and that portion is not vulnerable, but there is a component which is outdated, that is a problem, even though I don't use that component. Mend.io will discover there is a problem in the whole library; that is correct. That's a valid discovery, but in my case, for example, if I don't use that particular portion, then it actually is not making sense for me, but that's not a limitation of Mend.io; I think that's a general problem with any tool in the market because no tool in the market will actually know what portion of the code I'm actually using from that particular library if it is vulnerable or not.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch."
"Overall, it's a great product."
"It reduced the duration and the effort required to identify open-source licensing issues."
"FOSSA is at the heart of the license compliance part of our open-source management program."
"The most valuable feature is definitely the ease and speed of integrating into build pipelines, like a Jenkins pipeline or something along those lines. The ease of a new development team coming on board and integrating FOSSA with a new project, or even an existing project, can be done so quickly that it's invaluable and it's easy to ask the developers to use a tool like this. Those developers greatly value the very quick feedback they get on any licensing or security vulnerability issues."
"The scalability is excellent."
"Having it as a resource to very quickly triage incredibly high volumes of open-source coming into the company through agile development programs was invaluable."
"FOSSA allows us to keep track of all dependencies to ensure they are up to date and not causing any vulnerabilities."
"Scanning and collecting third-party libraries and classifying license types ensures our third-party software policy is followed and that we’re not using forbidden libraries."
"We find licenses together with WhiteSource which are associated with a certain library, then we get a classification of the license. This is with respect to criticality and vulnerability, so we could take action and improve some things, or replace a third-party library which seems to be too risky for us to use on legal grounds."
"With WhiteSource in place, we are going to be able to do the whole process automatically and it will be confident that we removed the vulnerabilities and license violations."
"The peace of mind we have now is a total game-changer."
"WhiteSource helped reduce our mean time to resolution since the adoption of the product."
"In my opinion, it is the best because with respect to the scan coverage, it is giving basically all the components we are looking for and all the requirements we require, and compared to other tools, especially in terms of identifying and integrating into our DevSecOps and CI/CD, Mend.io is compatible, with good integration coverage across all the technologies it supports and a relatively low noise ratio with accurate issues and useful customization options."
"The tool is now a mandatory part of our organization to use as a benchmark, giving us a technical advantage."
"It saves a lot of money with early fixing."
 

Cons

"On the legal and policy sides, there is some room for improvement. I know that our legal team has raised complaints about having to approve the same dependency multiple times, as opposed to having them it across the entire organization."
"I would like more customized categories because our company is so big."
"For open-source management, FOSSA's out-of-the-box policy engine is easy to use, but the list of licenses is not as complete as we would like it to be. They should add more open-source licenses to the selection."
"I would like the FOSSA API to be broader. I would like not to have to interact with the GUI at all, to do the work that I want to do. I would like them to do API-first development, rather than a focus on the GUI."
"Security scanning is an area for improvement. At this point, our experience is that we're only scanning for license information in components, and we're not scanning for security vulnerability information. We don't have access to that data. We use other tools for that. It would be an improvement for us to use one tool instead of two, so that we just have to go through one process instead of two."
"On the dashboard, there should be an option to increase the column width so that we can see the complete name of the GitHub repository. Currently, on the dashboard, we see the list of projects, but to see the complete name, you have to hover your mouse over an item, which is annoying."
"I wish there was a way that you could have a more global rollout of it, instead of having to do it in each repository individually. It's possible, that's something that is offered now, or maybe if you were using the CI Jenkins, you'd be able to do that. But with Travis, there wasn't an easy way to do that. At least not that I could find. That was probably the biggest issue."
"I would like more customized categories because our company is so big. This is doable for them. They are still in the stages of trying to figure this out since we are one of their biggest companies that they support."
"The solution lacks the code snippet part."
"Some detected libraries do not specify a location of where in the source they were matched from, which is something that should be enhanced to enable quicker troubleshooting."
"Mend lets you create custom policies. They're not too complicated to set up, but it would be helpful if they had some preconfigured policies to match what we have in Azure DevOps. That would save us a lot of time. It's tedious to configure the policies manually, and I lack the capacity to do it right now. Other products have preconfigured packs and templates, and Mend doesn't."
"I rated the solution an eight out of ten because WhiteSource hasn't built in a couple of features that we would have loved to use and they say they're on their roadmap. I'm hoping that they'll be able to build and deliver in 2022."
"For monitoring capabilities in Mend.io, I did not understand the maintenance part."
"WhiteSource is working on a UI refresh. That's probably been one of the pain points for us as it feels like a really old application."
"Mend supports most of the common package managers, but it doesn't support some that we use. I would appreciate it if they can quickly make these changes to add new package managers when necessary."
"WhiteSource only produces a report, which is nice to look at. However, you have to check that report every week, to see if something was found that you don't want. It would be great if the build that's generating a report would fail if it finds a very important vulnerability, for instance."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is reasonable as compared to the market. It is competitively priced in comparison to other similar solutions on the market. It is also quite affordable in terms of the value that it delivers as compared to its alternative of hiring a team."
"FOSSA is a fairly priced product. It is not either cheaper or expensive. The pricing lies somewhere in the middle. The solution is worth the money that we are spending to use it."
"The solution's cost is a five out of ten."
"FOSSA is not cheap, but their offering is top-notch. It is very much a "you get what you pay for" scenario. Regardless of the price, I highly recommend FOSSA."
"The solution's pricing is good and reasonable because you can literally use a lot of it for free."
"We always negotiate for the best price possible, and as far as I know, Mend has done an excellent job with their pricing. Our management is happy with the pricing, which has led to renewals."
"We are paying a lot of money to use WhiteSource. In our company, it is not easy to argue that it is worth the price. ​"
"WhiteSource is much more affordable than Veracode."
"Pricing and licensing are comparable to other tools. When we started, it was less than our existing solution. I can't go into specifics, but it isn't cheap."
"The solution involves a yearly licensing fee."
"Its pricing model is per developer. It depends on the number of developers in the company. The license is for a minimum of 20 developers. So, even if you are a small startup with less than 10 developers, you have to buy a license for 20 developers on a yearly subscription, which makes it quite expensive for startup customers. I provide consultation to startup accelerators. They're small at the beginning, and only once they grow to 20 developers, they can afford this tool. As a result, WhiteSource is missing this target audience. Their licensing is not flexible."
"The version that we are using, WhiteSource Bolt, is a free integration with Azure DevOps."
"Pricing is competitive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Composition Analysis (SCA) solutions are best for your needs.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Outsourcing Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Outsourcing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business10
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise22
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with FOSSA?
FOSSA does not show the exact line of code with vulnerabilities, which adds time to the process as we have to locate these manually. Some other tools like Check Point or SonarQube provide exact lin...
What is your primary use case for FOSSA?
I have worked with FOSSA primarily to manage the dependencies in our projects. For example, if I take a Spring Boot application, FOSSA helps in identifying mismatches or unsupported dependencies th...
What advice do you have for others considering FOSSA?
For those seeking to ensure their application is updated with the latest features, FOSSA can be a beneficial add-on. However, it should not replace your existing primary security solutions such as ...
How does WhiteSource compare with SonarQube?
Red Hat Ceph does well in simplifying storage integration by replacing the need for numerous storage solutions. This solution allows for multiple copies of replicated and coded pools to be kept, ea...
How does WhiteSource compare with Black Duck?
We researched Black Duck but ultimately chose WhiteSource when looking for an application security tool. WhiteSource is a software solution that enables agile open source security and license compl...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Mend.io?
Mend.io SCA offers a competitive pricing structure that is relatively affordable compared to similar solutions in the market. This makes it an attractive option for organizations looking to enhance...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
WhiteSource, Mend SCA, Mend.io Supply Chain Defender, Mend SAST
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

AppDyanmic, Uber, Twitter, Zendesk, Confluent
Microsoft, Autodesk, NCR, Target, IBM, vodafone, Siemens, GE digital, KPMG, LivePerson, Jack Henry and Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about FOSSA vs. Mend.io and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
917,433 professionals have used our research since 2012.