The deepest SCA in the market. And only that.
If your primary concern is open-source license risk across millions of components, Black Duck is authoritative. For everything else — and especially for AI-agent security — you need more.
What Black Duck does well
Industry-leading SCA depth, the broadest vulnerability and license database, excellent compliance for M&A due diligence and regulated industries, container scanning.
But:
No SAST. No business-logic detection. No MCP integration. No agent-time scanning. No IDE copilot. Enterprise pricing only. No free tier. Professional services typically required for onboarding.
CybeDefend vs Black Duck
| Feature | CybeDefend | Black Duck |
|---|---|---|
Detection× 10 | ||
| Agent-time scanning | ✓ | ✗ |
| SAST | ✓ | ✗ |
| SCA | ✓ | ✓ |
| IaC scanning | ✓ | ✗ |
| Container scanning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Secret detection | ✓ | ✗ |
| Business logic flaws | ✓ | ✗ |
| Reachability analysis | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI-BOM — AI component inventory (EU AI Act + NIST AI RMF) | ✓ | ✗ |
| Prompt injection & LLM-misuse scanner (OWASP LLM Top 10) | ✓ | ✗ |
AI & Agent× 7 | ||
| MCP-native (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf…) | ✓ | ✗ |
| IDE security copilot | ✓ | ✗ |
| AI-generated verified patches | ✓ | ✗ |
| Auto-fix → ready-to-merge PR | ✓ | ✗ |
| Security Code Knowledge Graph | ✓ | ✗ |
| VibeDefend — security rules distributed to AI coding agents | ✓ | ✗ |
| Coding agent sandbox policy (allow/deny/warn before every write) | ✓ | ✗ |
Operations× 5 | ||
| CI/CD pipeline gate | ✓ | ✓ |
| Low false-positive rate | ✓ | ~ |
| Setup under 5 minutes | ✓ | ✗ |
| CybeRisk Score — 0-100 score + AI-generated weekly Top 10 brief | ✓ | ✗ |
| EU/US sovereign deployment | ✓ | ~ |
✓ = Yes - ✗ = No - ~ = Partial
SCA with reachability vs SCA alone
Black Duck finds vulnerable dependencies comprehensively. CybeDefend goes further: its Knowledge Graph maps the call chain from your application code to the vulnerable function inside the dependency. A vulnerability that your code never calls is deprioritised. One that is called on a hot path is flagged immediately — with the specific location in the AI agent's output.
Beyond the dependency layer
Black Duck's strength is SCA and license compliance. CybeDefend covers the full application security stack: SAST, SCA, IaC, container, secrets, and business logic — all enforced at agent-time before a PR exists. Teams using Black Duck for M&A due diligence can continue to do so; CybeDefend handles the ongoing development security layer.
Agent writes code
CybeDefend scans
PR opens clean
Reachability + precision: cutting through dependency noise
Black Duck tracks every CVE across your dependency tree — thousands of findings for a typical enterprise. CybeDefend adds reachability analysis: filtering out the 80% of CVEs that exist in packages you import but never call. Fewer findings, higher signal, faster remediation.
CybeDefend includes SCA with reachability context. Where Black Duck stops at 'this dependency has a CVE,' CybeDefend shows whether the AI agent's new code actually calls the vulnerable function.
Pricing at a glance
Transparent pricing is a core CybeDefend value. See how we compare.
CybeDefend
- Developer€204/year
- Team — 5–10 users€1,644/year – €2,844/year
- Scale — 15–25 users€6,588/year – €8,988/year
- EnterpriseContact sales
Black Duck
- EnterpriseContact sales
* Black Duck does not publish public pricing — contact their sales team for a quote.
Prices as of 2025. Always verify on vendor websites before purchasing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Black Duck better than CybeDefend for license compliance?
Black Duck's license database is the industry's most comprehensive, especially for M&A due diligence and regulated industries (healthcare, finance, defense). CybeDefend includes license compliance as part of its SCA. For organisations where license compliance is a primary use case at enterprise scale, Black Duck remains the specialist choice.
Can CybeDefend replace Black Duck for SCA?
For most development teams, yes. CybeDefend's SCA covers CVE detection, license risk, and reachability scoring. For M&A-grade license audits or regulatory environments requiring Black Duck's specific report formats, evaluate on a case-by-case basis.
What is Black Duck's pricing model?
Black Duck is enterprise-only with no published rate card and no free tier. Professional services are typically required for deployment. CybeDefend offers transparent per-seat pricing.
Install in your AI agent. First scan in 5 minutes.
No credit card. No setup call. Pick your agent, paste the command, and Cybe enforces your rules from the very next prompt.
claude mcp add cybedefend --transport http https://mcp-eu.cybedefend.com/mcpHosted by us, no install. Just point your agent at the VibeDefend endpoint.