Semgrep Review 2026
Semgrep has rapidly become the developer's preferred code analysis tool, combining fast static analysis with a powerful custom rule engine. The platform takes a fundamentally different approach to SAST by making rules easy to write, understand, and share, leading to organic adoption across development teams.
What Semgrep Does Well
Speed and low false positives make Semgrep a joy to use in CI/CD pipelines. Scans complete in seconds to minutes rather than hours, and the pattern-based approach produces fewer false positives than traditional SAST tools. This means developers actually pay attention to findings.
Custom rule authoring is Semgrep's signature capability. Security engineers can write detection rules in a YAML-based syntax that mirrors the code patterns they want to detect. This makes it possible to codify organization-specific security standards and enforce them automatically.
Semgrep Supply Chain adds SCA with reachability analysis. Instead of flagging every vulnerable dependency, it identifies only vulnerabilities that are actually reachable from your code, dramatically reducing noise.
Where Semgrep Falls Short
Analysis depth is less than enterprise SAST tools. Semgrep performs intraprocedural analysis well but does not match the deep interprocedural, cross-file taint analysis of tools like Checkmarx or Veracode. Complex vulnerability patterns may be missed.
DAST and runtime capabilities are not part of the platform. Semgrep is purely a static analysis tool. Organizations needing dynamic testing must use additional tools.
Enterprise compliance reporting is less developed than traditional AppSec platforms. While Semgrep maps findings to OWASP and CWE, the audit-ready compliance reports that regulated industries need are more basic.
Pricing
Semgrep Community is free for up to 10 developers. Semgrep Team and Enterprise tiers are priced per developer per month, with published pricing on the website.
The Verdict
Semgrep is the best code analysis tool for developer adoption and custom security policy enforcement. For maximum vulnerability detection depth, pair it with an enterprise SAST tool.