Stop guessing which one. Put them side by side.

The grid says what these tools are. This says what builders did about it — one decision per person, changeable whenever you change your mind.

# Tool comparison — GitGuardian vs Dependabot vs Gitleaks

Source: Kbaise, a directory of tools that work with Lovable projects.
Pick one and tell me why before writing any integration code.

## GitGuardian (gitguardian)
- URL: https://www.gitguardian.com
- Category: Code review, testing & security
- Cost: mixed — Starter free for up to 25 developers: unlimited real-time scanning, up to 500 historical detections, 10,000 API calls/mo, 1 GB of git history; Growth and Enterprise quoted by sales; free for repos under your GitHub organisation
- What it is: Hosted secrets platform that scans commits in real time across GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps using several hundred detectors. It validates whether a discovered credential is still live and tracks each incident through to remediation. Paid tiers extend scanning to CI logs, container registries and collaboration tools.
- Why builders pick it: Real-time alerts mean you hear about a leaked key within seconds of the push rather than at the next nightly scan, and the validity check tells you whether to rotate immediately or stand down.
- Trap: The free Starter tier caps historical scanning at 500 detections and 1 GB of git history, so a large legacy repository will never be fully backfilled.
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/gitguardian

## Dependabot (dependabot)
- URL: https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/dependabot
- Category: Code review, testing & security
- Cost: free — $0 on all GitHub repositories, public and private, including private repos on the free GitHub plan
- What it is: GitHub-native bot with three jobs: alerts for vulnerable dependencies drawn from the GitHub Advisory Database, security updates that automatically open pull requests bumping to a patched version, and scheduled version updates configured in .github/dependabot.yml. Grouped updates and auto-merge rules keep pull request volume manageable.
- Why builders pick it: Zero-cost, near-zero-config baseline. The package.json your agent wrote will drift into known-CVE territory within months, and this is the one tool that quietly fixes it while you sleep.
- Trap: It only knows advisories already published to GitHub's database, so brand-new malicious packages slip through; pair it with Socket. It also skips archived repos, and ungrouped updates get spammy fast.
- Wiring: Enable under repo Settings > Code security, then add .github/dependabot.yml
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/dependabot

## Gitleaks (gitleaks)
- URL: https://github.com/gitleaks/gitleaks
- Category: Code review, testing & security
- Cost: free — $0 forever, MIT open source; the official GitHub Action needs a free license key for organisation-owned repos, none for personal accounts
- What it is: Scans git repositories, loose files and stdin for passwords, API keys and tokens. It walks full commit history using git log -p, so it finds credentials in old commits that were later deleted from the working tree. Runs as a CLI, pre-commit hook, Docker image or GitHub Action.
- Why builders pick it: The highest-value five-minute install on this list. An assistant pasting a live OPENAI_API_KEY or database URL into a committed config file is routine, and once pushed only history rewriting removes it.
- Trap: Entropy-based detection false-positives on hashes, lockfiles and test fixtures, so budget time for a .gitleaksignore baseline. The maintainer has declared it feature complete, security patches only.
- Wiring: brew install gitleaks && gitleaks detect --source .
- Full dossier: /api/public/tools/gitleaks

## Quick read

- Free with no card: Dependabot, Gitleaks.

## Rules
1. Prefer the free tier when no budget was stated, and say what the ceiling is.
2. Read the full dossier before integrating.
3. Fetch /api/public/models before writing any AI model ID.

Agents can fetch the same thing: GET /api/public/compare?slugs=gitguardian,dependabot,gitleaks