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Black Duck vs JFrog Xray comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Apr 20, 2025

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
6.2
Black Duck improved efficiency by identifying vulnerabilities early, saving time, streamlining audits, reducing manual effort, and enhancing code security.
Sentiment score
5.9
JFrog Xray improved efficiency, security, and compliance, reduced downtime, and sped up release cycles with enhanced vulnerability detection and reporting.
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.
 

Customer Service

Sentiment score
9.3
Black Duck support is praised for professionalism and speed, but faces inconsistent feedback, response delays, and suggests chatbot integration improvements.
Sentiment score
3.8
JFrog Xray's customer service receives mixed reviews, with varying satisfaction in support response times and account manager interactions.
There are some pain points with the response time and first-level support quality.
When we need clarifications, we contact our account manager, and they arrange demos.
 

Scalability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Black Duck is scalable, praised for cloud support and integration, but pricing may deter smaller firms despite versatility.
Sentiment score
7.4
JFrog Xray is viewed as scalable, accommodating growth plans, despite some PostgreSQL constraints, and rates scalability 7-8/10.
I would rate the scalability of Black Duck 8 or 9.
 

Stability Issues

Sentiment score
8.0
Black Duck is highly stable, reliable, with minimal issues; users recommend against transitioning to Hub due to potential problems.
Sentiment score
7.7
JFrog Xray is praised for stability and performance, though its provided PostgreSQL is considered unstable, needing enterprise support.
 

Room For Improvement

Black Duck needs better integration, speed, UI, documentation, pricing, security, scalability, and support for improved user experience.
JFrog Xray needs improvements in documentation, UI, reporting, performance, vulnerability management, integration, APIs, and troubleshooting support.
It can improve on the security side of it, specifically vulnerabilities identification.
There are areas for improvement such as false positives and the scanning of containers.
Black Duck does not have the SBOM management part.
X-ray needs improvement in supporting more than one database, as it currently only supports PostgreSQL.
 

Setup Cost

Black Duck's pricing ranges from $10,000 to $70,000, with unlimited users for code size, though some find it expensive.
The basic scanning capabilities come with Artifactory, however, curation requires additional licenses.
 

Valuable Features

Black Duck excels in vulnerability scanning, license management, and policy management, offering strong UI and seamless Docker integration.
JFrog Xray efficiently blocks vulnerabilities with policy watches, integrates with Artifactory, and excels in scanning and license compliance.
The most valuable feature of Black Duck is the composition analysis feature, which is effective for security risk management.
Black Duck's ability to identify dependencies very accurately has been most valuable in identifying and mitigating risks.
The software composition analysis is most effective for security risk management.
The most valuable features of JFrog Xray are its curation capabilities, its native integration with Artifactory, scanning for vulnerabilities, and license compliance features.
 

Categories and Ranking

Black Duck
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
1st
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
22
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
JFrog Xray
Ranking in Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
6th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Vulnerability Management (32nd), Container Security (20th), Software Supply Chain Security (2nd)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Software Composition Analysis (SCA) category, the mindshare of Black Duck is 18.2%, down from 22.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of JFrog Xray is 10.2%, up from 8.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
 

Featured Reviews

Saravanan_Radhakrishnan - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables applications to be secure, but it must provide more open APIs
The product enables other applications to be secure. We use it to onboard 400 to 500 applications into the DevOps platform, protect them, and have a secure environment. The tool integrates well with different technologies, application stacks, and databases. The APIs are available. We can read the blogs in the community for open-source compliance and security. The community feeds are important. Black Duck is a leader in Gartner. It is a reliable solution.
Mokshi Pandita - PeerSpot reviewer
An intelligent solution that prioritizes which vulnerability to target first in your project
We could create any number of repositories, but we can create only thirty projects with JFrog Xray. If I want things to work, it has to be one project and multiple repositories that belong to different real projects. So I have a limitation of thirty projects, despite being a premium customer. JFrog Xray does not have a dashboard. Although I am able to generate reports, there is no proper dashboard where I can see the total number of vulnerabilities, the total number of license issues, and how many vulnerabilities are fixed. Second, I found the shift left approach missing with JFrog Xray. JFrog Xray has integration with IDEs, but it does not tell you about the vulnerabilities until the artifact is created. However, Snyk could directly integrate with your repository and would not allow you to build unless you fix the problem.
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Software Composition Analysis (SCA) solutions are best for your needs.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
13%
Insurance Company
4%
Financial Services Firm
25%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Black Duck?
The cloud option of the product is always available and a positive aspect of the solution.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Black Duck?
The price charged by Black Duck is exorbitant. For the features provided by the product, I would not want to pay a high price. There are many other products in the market that offer better features...
What do you like most about JFrog Xray?
JFrog Xray shows us a list of vulnerabilities that can impact our code.
What needs improvement with JFrog Xray?
X-ray needs improvement in supporting more than one database, as it currently only supports PostgreSQL. More support during troubleshooting sessions would also be beneficial.
What is your primary use case for JFrog Xray?
Our primary use case for X-ray includes multiple activities such as security and vulnerability scanning. We already use Black Duck for these purposes, and we are evaluating how JFrog Xray can offer...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Blackduck Hub, Black Duck Protex, Black Duck Security Checker
JFrog Security Essentials
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Samsung, Siemens, ScienceLogic, BryterCX, Dynatrace
google, amazon, cisco, netflix, oracle, vmware, facebook
Find out what your peers are saying about Black Duck vs. JFrog Xray and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,592 professionals have used our research since 2012.