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Aikido Security vs Black Duck SCA comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

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

ROI

Sentiment score
8.4
Aikido Security enhances efficiency, reduces costs, simplifies compliance, and increases productivity by automating and consolidating security tasks.
Sentiment score
3.6
Black Duck improved efficiency by identifying vulnerabilities early, saving time, streamlining audits, reducing manual effort, and enhancing code security.
Aikido Security caught a critical remote code execution vulnerability in my Python machine learning pipelines before it reached production.
Product Manager at Zidio development
Since we got rid of that, our productivity has increased, I believe, by thirty-two percent.
SecOps Engineer at IriusRisk
We were expecting to complete the compliance in a month, but I figured out Aikido Security could do it within a week for all our 13 repositories.
Co-Founder & CTO at Mango Giraffe
If you're using it on critical external programs where there is regulatory compliance on ensuring that the source code is clean from open-source, there's substantial ROI.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
7.4
Aikido Security's customer service is efficient, responsive, and provides technical, proactive support with highly valued resources for quick issue resolution.
Sentiment score
5.1
Black Duck SCA's support is praised for expertise but criticized for inconsistency and delays, with calls for process improvements.
Aikido Security was the easiest to use, the easiest to onboard, and the one with the most active customer support.
SecOps Engineer at IriusRisk
Their team proactively reached out after signup to ensure we were set up correctly.
Product Manager at Zidio development
Most issues were resolved through documentation links, configuration guidance, or clarification around findings.
Software Developer at Bisag-N
There are some pain points with the response time and first-level support quality.
Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
7.9
Aikido Security scales efficiently with multiple projects and teams, though organizational challenges and minor performance lags may occur.
Sentiment score
6.6
Black Duck SCA is highly rated for scalability, supporting diverse environments, but its cost may limit smaller companies.
That kind of reliability becomes invisible when it works well, which is exactly what you want from a security tool running in your CI/CD pipelines.
Product Manager at Zidio development
Scalability with Aikido Security has been good, as new teams continue to be added without significant performance issues.
Software Developer at Bisag-N
Aikido Security scales well by supporting multiple projects, repositories, and development teams on a single platform.
Full Stack Developer at Sri Krishna Arts and Science
I would rate the scalability of Black Duck 8 or 9.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.8
Aikido Security is consistently reliable with no major disruptions, displaying dependable performance and precise security findings despite occasional delays.
Sentiment score
7.9
Black Duck SCA is reported as stable and reliable, with occasional delays and standard maintenance requirements noted by users.
The platform has been reliable and provides accurate security findings.
Full Stack Developer at Sri Krishna Arts and Science
Aikido Security has been stable, and there have been no major outages affecting workflow.
Software Developer at Bisag-N
 

Room For Improvement

Users want improved Jira integration, customization, niche language support, faster scans, better documentation, alerts, and affordable pricing.
Black Duck SCA needs an intuitive interface, better documentation, faster scans, enhanced integration, and improved cost-effectiveness and support.
Deeper customization around policies and reporting would be beneficial, since some organizations have specific compliance requirements and the customization can feel limited compared to larger, enterprise-focused platforms.
Software Developer at Bisag-N
I would love to see a Terraform module for Aikido Security.
SecOps Engineer at IriusRisk
I had a certain object with a UUID that was being considered as a private secret key or API key, which was not the case.
Co-Founder & CTO at Mango Giraffe
It can improve on the security side of it, specifically vulnerabilities identification.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
The documentation is not really on the mark.
Project Lead at ABB
There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers.
Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
 

Setup Cost

Black Duck SCA pricing is flexible but can be costly, with options based on user count or code size.
I used the free trial, which was sufficient for evaluating the platform and its core features.
Full Stack Developer at Sri Krishna Arts and Science
 

Valuable Features

Aikido Security offers an intuitive interface, seamless integrations, and effective tools to enhance productivity and streamline security workflows.
Black Duck SCA offers robust vulnerability scanning, seamless integration, efficient compliance management, and enhances security with dependency mapping.
We were able to get all codebase vulnerability fixes within a week for all our 13 or 14 repositories that we had.
Co-Founder & CTO at Mango Giraffe
Security shifted left, meaning issues were caught during development rather than after deployment.
Product Manager at Zidio development
My favorite feature is the dependency vulnerability scanning because it quickly identifies the risk in third-party packages, which saves me time in finding vulnerabilities.
Full Stack Developer at Sri Krishna Arts and Science
The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the composition analysis feature, which is effective for security risk management.
Director at a healthcare company with 10,001+ employees
Black Duck's ability to identify dependencies very accurately has been most valuable in identifying and mitigating risks.
IP Head at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
If that component has a vulnerability from any of the sources, it should be considered and shown regardless of whether it is vulnerable from different sources.
Project Lead at ABB
 

Categories and Ranking

Aikido Security
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
12th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (20th), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (15th), Web Application Firewall (WAF) (27th), Container Security (30th), Static Code Analysis (9th), Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) (23rd), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (9th), DevSecOps (9th), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (11th)
Black Duck SCA
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
3rd
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.2
Number of Reviews
23
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2026, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Aikido Security is 2.6%, up from 0.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Black Duck SCA is 9.2%, down from 18.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Black Duck SCA9.2%
Aikido Security2.6%
Other88.2%
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

B Goswami - PeerSpot reviewer
Product Manager at Zidio development
Security has shifted left and now catches vulnerabilities early in our development workflow
There are a few areas for improvement. The first is scan speed. For large repositories, initial scans can be slow. Incremental scanning helps, but full scans still take considerable time. The second thing is the false positive rate. While Auto-Triage is good, it is not perfect. Occasionally, genuine issues get filtered out and real false positives slip through. The third one is remediation guidance. Aikido Security tells you what is vulnerable, but sometimes the fix suggestions are generic. More specific, actionable remediation steps would save developer time. The fourth one is IDE integrations. It currently works best in CI/CD pipelines. A proper VS Code or JetBrains plugin for real-time scanning while coding would be a significant improvement. From a customer point of view, the following things could change. The first thing is documentation for custom rules. Aikido Security allows you to create custom scanning rules, but the documentation for this feature is surprisingly thin. I spent considerable time in community forums and with trial and error just to configure basic custom rules. Step-by-step guides with real-world examples would make this feature much more accessible. The second thing is better Slack and communication integrations. Currently, security alerts come through email and dashboard notifications, but our team lives in Slack. A more configurable Slack integration that sends contextual alerts directly to the relevant developer, not just a generic channel notification, would dramatically improve response time. The third one is historical trend reporting. While Aikido Security shows current vulnerability status well, generating historical reports showing security posture improvement over time is limited. For presenting security progress to management or stakeholders, better exportable trend reports would be very valuable.
SS
Project Lead at ABB
Compliance checks have improved while vulnerability coverage and SBOM accuracy still need work
I think Black Duck SCA needs to improve on the overall approach. I assume that the people who developed Black Duck SCA believe that users will use this tool for some time in a full-fledged way with all those features. However, the way it really works with product development or in a software development life cycle is that this is just one of the steps for checking whether something is license compliant, whether it has vulnerabilities, or whether the SBOM is generated. It is just one of those steps in the software development process. The expectation from the tool's perspective is that users have to go into the Black Duck SCA portal, look at each of those items, and if something is not correct, try to find it out and update or configure the right CPEs or PURLs or those kinds of things. In reality, most users would not have time for this because they would have done this as part of the build and would generate an SBOM as part of the build. The tool should be quite usable. If a feature works properly and correctly, then nobody will go back and try to spend time on that. For example, if I generate an SBOM and that SBOM has a particular CPE and there are multiple sources, the tool should produce those CPEs with vulnerabilities, put them into the SBOM, and allow me to move forward. If there are more bugs or more configuration requirements, the usage will come down. It is like a mobile application: if there is too much data that needs to be looked at, configured, and used, then the number of users would come down. The tool should be fast, usable, and accurate. Users should just be able to use it without needing to learn too much. The learning curve should be less when using a tool, and the usage should be easy with basic understanding. They should not need to go through complex processes and can assume that whatever data is given is correct. That is where the whole problem with Black Duck SCA lies. The documentation is not really on the mark. For example, if there is a functionality, such as wanting to see a CPE, the documentation should show how to get this via API or see it and how to configure that with examples. Most of the time the tool says it is all in the community, which is not ideal. The community is different from a conceptual view. The community is for bugs and issues that users want to report. However, people who are looking at the tool fresh and need to see functionality such as scan configuration need clear documentation. If I want to see the scan configurations and how to do it, there are videos, but there should be clear documentation with examples, such as how to configure for Docker using specific commands and methods. This example could be clear documentation and should not be redirected to the community every time. If there is a problem or those kinds of issues, they should go to the community and solutions will be found. However, for basic documentation on features being provided, I do not see that kind of clear documentation with clear examples.
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Computer Software Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
11%
University
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Large Enterprise17
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Aikido Security?
I think Aikido Security could be improved by addressing its Jira integration, which I feel needs a bit of work. For my preferences, it is a bit too rigid. They recently added the capability of havi...
What is your primary use case for Aikido Security?
My main use case for Aikido Security is to utilize it as part of our vulnerability management program, where we also scan our images, codes, and manage our SBOM. A specific example of how I use Aik...
What advice do you have for others considering Aikido Security?
Since switching to Aikido Security, I have noticed a positive impact on my team's productivity with measurable results, as we now have measurements. Before, we did not even know how many vulnerabil...
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 needs improvement with Black Duck?
I think Black Duck SCA needs to improve on the overall approach. I assume that the people who developed Black Duck SCA believe that users will use this tool for some time in a full-fledged way with...
What is your primary use case for Black Duck?
The primary use cases are compliance and scanning in terms of license compliance and trying to identify snippets, particularly if there are any snippets being identified that are coming from open s...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

FinTech GoCardless ZIP CertifID HealthTech Dental Intelligence PE & Group Techstars Cronos Group Security Tech Human Security Tines HR Tech Simployer Recruitee Agency November Five Other Lighthouse (Hospitality Tech) Smokeball (LegalTech) Runna (B2C Tech) GEA Group (Manufacturing) Community fibre (Telecom) n8n (Software Development)
Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
Find out what your peers are saying about Aikido Security vs. Black Duck SCA and other solutions. Updated: June 2026.
900,747 professionals have used our research since 2012.