Compare
Snyk finds known vulnerabilities in your dependencies and code patterns. GauntletCI finds behavioral regressions in the lines you actually changed. They answer entirely different questions.
| Tool | What it checks | What it misses |
|---|---|---|
| Snyk | Known CVEs, dependency vulnerabilities, security code patterns | Behavioral change risk, behavioral regressions in the diff |
| GauntletCI | Change safety, Behavioral Change Risk in the diff | -- |
Snyk
Snyk connects to your repository, scans your dependency manifest and source code against a continuously updated vulnerability database, and reports known CVEs, license risks, and code-level security patterns. It is primarily a SaaS platform -- your code and dependency information is processed by Snyk servers.
Snyk excels at answering: "Does this codebase depend on a package with a known vulnerability?" and "Does this code match a known-bad security pattern?" It is the right tool for supply chain risk and CVE hygiene.
GauntletCI
GauntletCI runs entirely on your machine. It reads the git diff, applies deterministic behavioral rules to the changed lines, and reports risk introduced by this specific change -- before the commit is created. No code leaves the machine. No account required. No network call.
GauntletCI answers: "Did this change remove a guard clause?", "Did it alter a public API contract?", "Did it introduce an async anti-pattern?" -- questions that vulnerability scanners are not designed to answer.
Snyk's vulnerability database covers known-bad patterns. Most production incidents are not caused by known CVEs -- they are caused by behavioral drift introduced in ordinary code changes: removed validations, altered exception handling, changed concurrency patterns, dropped null checks. These are not in any vulnerability database because they are not vulnerabilities. They are behavioral regressions.
A developer deletes an early return that protected a null dereference. No CVE exists for this. No dependency changed. Snyk reports nothing. GauntletCI flags the removed guard clause.
A catch block that logged and re-threw is replaced with one that swallows the exception. Perfectly valid code. No vulnerability pattern. GauntletCI detects the behavioral change and flags it.
A public method parameter type changes from string to int. All internal call sites compile. External consumers and serialized payloads break at runtime. Snyk does not model runtime API contracts.
An async void event handler is introduced, or a Task is blocked with .Result in a synchronous context. Correct C# code. No known vulnerability. GauntletCI catches the structural anti-pattern.
This is often the deciding factor for teams operating under strict data handling requirements. The two tools take fundamentally different positions.
Snyk
GauntletCI
| Feature | GauntletCI | Snyk |
|---|---|---|
| Primary focus | Behavioral regressions in the diff | Known vulnerabilities in dependencies and code |
| Analysis scope | Changed diff lines only | Full dependency tree + file scan |
| Data leaves the machine | Never -- 100% local execution | Yes -- SaaS platform, code sent to Snyk servers |
| Pre-commit speed | Under 1 second | Seconds to minutes (network round-trip) |
| Account required | No -- works fully offline | Yes -- Snyk account and authentication required |
| Air-gap / data residency | Yes -- no network dependency | No -- requires Snyk cloud for most features |
| False positives on old code | None -- diff-scoped by design | Yes -- reports pre-existing issues on every run |
| Removed logic detection | Yes -- flags deleted null guards, handlers | No -- pattern-based, cannot detect removals |
| API contract change detection | Yes -- public surface mutations flagged | No -- not in scope |
| Dependency vulnerability scan | No -- not in scope | Yes -- Snyk core strength |
| License compliance scanning | No | Yes (paid tier) |
| Local LLM enrichment | Built-in ONNX, fully offline | No |
| Baseline delta mode | Yes -- suppress pre-existing findings | No |
| Free tier | All rules, no account | Limited -- account required, rate-limited |
| MCP server | Yes -- AI assistants call GauntletCI directly | No |
| Custom rules | Yes -- implement IRule in C# | No -- rules are fixed |
The tools operate at different layers of risk and complement each other well. Run Snyk in your CI pipeline to block merges when new CVEs are introduced in dependencies. Run GauntletCI as a pre-commit hook to block commits when a behavioral regression is introduced in the diff. Snyk guards the supply chain. GauntletCI guards the behavior of the code you write.
