Static Application Security Testing (SAST) tools scan source code for vulnerability patterns before anything ships — and in 2026, a growing share of that source code is AI-generated or AI-assisted. That matters for SAST vendors specifically: a tool that only flags obviously bad patterns won’t catch the subtler mistakes that large language models reliably introduce (missing authorization checks, prompt-injection-adjacent string concatenation, reused secrets copied from training data patterns). Semgrep, Checkmarx One, and GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) are three of the most widely deployed SAST platforms, and each has leaned into AI differently — not just to find bugs, but to triage and fix them. We checked each vendor’s current pricing and product pages before writing this comparison. For background on the underlying risk this category addresses, see our walkthrough of OWASP’s guidance on securing AI-generated code and our review checklist for AI-generated code security.
At a Glance
| Tool | Starting Price | Free Plan | Best For | Key Specs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Semgrep | Free up to 10 contributors; Teams from $30/contributor/month | Yes — Free Edition, up to 10 contributors, 10 repos, AI-powered triage included | Teams wanting fast, open-core SAST with transparent per-seat pricing | Rule-based semantic pattern matching, open-source engine (Semgrep OSS) plus hosted platform, Semgrep Assistant AI triage/autofix |
| Checkmarx One | Custom — no public price, quoted per package | No self-serve free tier; demo-only | Large enterprises wanting a single modular AppSec platform (SAST+SCA+DAST+ASPM) | Modular packages (Essentials/Professional/Enterprise), Fusion AI correlation engine, Triage Assist and Remediation Assist AI features |
| GitHub Advanced Security | GitHub Code Security $30/active committer/month; Secret Protection $19/active committer/month | Yes, for public repositories; CodeQL/Dependabot free on all plans, GHAS features paid for private repos | Teams already living in GitHub wanting security checks inside the same PR workflow | CodeQL semantic analysis engine, Copilot Autofix AI-generated remediation suggestions, native PR/Actions integration |
Short Verdict
Semgrep is the easiest to start with and the most transparent on price — its free tier genuinely covers small teams, and its AI assistant is included at every tier rather than gated behind a separate add-on. Checkmarx One is built for large, regulated enterprises that want one platform covering SAST, SCA, DAST, and posture management together, but you’ll go through a sales cycle to find out what it costs. GitHub Advanced Security is the most natural fit if your code already lives on GitHub — its CodeQL engine and Copilot Autofix sit directly in the pull-request flow, at a clearly published per-committer price.
What Each One Is and How It Works
Semgrep is built around an open-source pattern-matching engine (Semgrep OSS) that understands code structure, not just text, so a rule can match “any call to this function where an argument isn’t sanitized” across several languages with one syntax. The hosted Semgrep AppSec Platform layers a dashboard, supply-chain (SCA) and secrets scanning, and Semgrep Assistant — an AI layer that explains findings in plain language, suggests fixes, and auto-triages likely false positives, consuming “AI credits” that scale with your plan.
Checkmarx One is a long-established enterprise SAST vendor’s unified platform, combining SAST, software composition analysis, API security, and application security posture management (ASPM) under one roof, sold in modular packages (Essentials, Professional, Enterprise) rather than a flat per-seat price. Its AI layer — marketed as Fusion, Triage Assist, and Remediation Assist — correlates findings across scanners, ranks them by exploitability, and generates candidate fixes for developers to review, drawing from a shared prepaid “Checkmarx Credits” balance rather than unlimited usage.
GitHub Advanced Security bundles GitHub’s security products — now sold as separable add-ons, GitHub Code Security and GitHub Secret Protection — on top of GitHub’s free CodeQL semantic analysis engine and Dependabot. CodeQL treats code as a queryable database, so a single query can find every place a tainted input reaches a dangerous sink across an entire codebase. Copilot Autofix, GitHub’s AI remediation layer, reads a CodeQL alert and proposes a fix as a normal code suggestion inside the pull request, which a human still has to review and accept before it merges.
Catching Vulnerabilities in AI-Generated Code
All three vendors now explicitly position part of their AI messaging around AI-written code specifically — not because SAST engines need a different detection method for LLM output (a SQL injection pattern is a SQL injection pattern regardless of who typed it), but because AI assistants tend to reproduce certain mistakes at higher volume: missing input validation copied from a plausible-looking but incomplete example, hardcoded credentials pattern-matched from public training data, and authorization checks omitted because the model wasn’t given enough context about who should be allowed to call a given function. Mend.io, Semgrep, and Checkmarx all now market AI-code-aware scanning as a named feature (Mend calls it “AI-generated code security”; Checkmarx lists an “AI Inventory” and “LLM Scanner”), and GitHub’s Copilot Autofix closes the loop by proposing a fix in the same AI-assisted workflow that may have introduced the bug. The practical takeaway for teams is the same across all three tools: none of them replace human review, and all three work best wired directly into CI so that AI-generated pull requests get scanned before merge, not after.
A minimal example of the kind of pattern-based rule Semgrep (or a similarly structured CodeQL query) would flag, whether the code was written by a person or an AI assistant:
rules:
- id: flask-sql-injection-string-format
languages: [python]
severity: ERROR
message: >
User input is concatenated directly into a SQL query string.
Use parameterized queries instead.
patterns:
- pattern: $CURSOR.execute("..." + $INPUT + "...")
- pattern-not: $CURSOR.execute("...", (...))
Pricing Breakdown
| Plan | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Semgrep Free Edition | $0 | Up to 10 contributors, up to 10 repos (10 private), 60 total AI credits, GitHub/GitLab auth only (no SSO). |
| Semgrep Teams | Starting at $30/contributor/month for Code (SAST); SCA add-on $30/contributor/month; Secrets add-on $15/contributor/month | Adds SSO, up to 500 private repos, 20 AI credits per developer/month, priority support. |
| Semgrep Enterprise | Custom, contact sales | Unlimited repos, 50 AI credits per developer/month, custom AI model provider, on-prem SCM support, dedicated account manager. |
| Checkmarx One (all tiers) | Custom, contact sales — no public list price | Priced per package (Essentials/Professional/Enterprise) and tailored to deployment (SaaS vs. self-hosted) and developer count; the Fusion/Triage/Remediation offering bundles 10 free contributing-developer SAST licenses. |
| GitHub Code Security | $30 per active committer, per month | Includes CodeQL-based SAST and Copilot Autofix suggestions; “active committer” means anyone who commits to a private repo with the feature enabled in a given month. |
| GitHub Secret Protection | $19 per active committer, per month | Secret scanning and push protection; sold separately from Code Security since GitHub split GHAS into standalone products. |
| GitHub public repos | $0 | CodeQL, Dependabot, and secret scanning are free on public repositories regardless of plan. |
Checkmarx’s lack of public pricing is a genuine feature of how the vendor sells, not a gap in our research — the company’s own pricing page confirms quotes are custom and handled through sales, typically returned within one business day.
Pros and Cons
Semgrep
- Pros: transparent published pricing, genuinely useful free tier, open-source core you can run entirely offline, AI triage/autofix included at every paid tier rather than a separate SKU
- Cons: less breadth than Checkmarx across DAST/ASPM/container security; AI credits are metered and can run out on heavy-use teams on lower tiers
Checkmarx One
- Pros: broadest single-platform coverage (SAST, SCA, API security, DAST, ASPM, secrets), mature enterprise support and compliance track record, modular packages let you add capability incrementally
- Cons: no public pricing or self-serve trial, so budgeting requires a sales conversation; AI features are credit-metered and gated by package tier in ways that the vendor’s own FAQ is inconsistent about
GitHub Advanced Security
- Pros: lives natively inside the PR workflow developers already use, CodeQL is a mature and well-documented engine, Copilot Autofix proposes fixes as ordinary suggested changes, free for public repos
- Cons: ties you to GitHub as your source-code host, per-active-committer pricing for private repos can get expensive at scale, narrower scope (no built-in DAST or full ASPM) compared to Checkmarx
Who It’s a Good Fit For
- Choose Semgrep if you want predictable, published pricing and a free tier that actually works for a small team, with AI triage included rather than upsold separately.
- Choose Checkmarx One if you’re a large or regulated enterprise that wants one vendor covering SAST, SCA, DAST, and posture management, and you have the budget and procurement process for a custom contract.
- Choose GitHub Advanced Security if your code already lives on GitHub and you want security findings and AI-suggested fixes to show up directly in the same pull requests your team already reviews.
Who Should Look Elsewhere
Teams that need deep dynamic (DAST) or interactive (IAST) testing as a primary requirement, rather than static analysis, should weigh Checkmarx’s bundled DAST against a dedicated DAST specialist. Teams hosting code outside GitHub (GitLab, Bitbucket, self-hosted Git) can’t use GitHub Advanced Security at all and should compare GitLab’s own built-in SAST or a host-agnostic tool like Semgrep or Checkmarx instead. And budget-constrained teams that can’t clear Checkmarx’s sales process or GHAS’s per-committer cost at their headcount should start with Semgrep’s free tier or its open-source CLI before evaluating anything paid.
Bottom Line
None of these three tools “solve” AI-generated code risk by themselves — they’re pattern- and data-flow-based scanners that happen to be good at catching the kinds of mistakes AI assistants make at scale, provided they’re wired into CI and reviewed by a human. Semgrep offers the clearest path from free to paid, Checkmarx offers the broadest enterprise platform behind a custom quote, and GitHub Advanced Security offers the tightest workflow integration if you’re already a GitHub shop.
FAQ
Do these tools specifically detect “AI-generated” vulnerabilities differently from human-written ones?
No — the underlying detection methods (pattern matching, data-flow/taint analysis) don’t distinguish code by who or what wrote it. What’s changed is vendor marketing and some added context features (like Mend’s “AI-generated code security” and Checkmarx’s “AI Inventory”) aimed at flagging code that came from an AI assistant so teams can apply extra scrutiny or policy.
Is Semgrep’s free tier usable for a real team, or is it just a trial?
It’s a genuine permanent free tier, not a time-limited trial — up to 10 contributors and 10 repositories, with Semgrep’s own AI-powered detection and triage included, per Semgrep’s published pricing page.
Why doesn’t Checkmarx publish prices?
Checkmarx sells modular packages tailored to deployment model (SaaS vs. self-hosted), module selection, and developer count, and states on its own pricing page that quotes go through sales rather than a self-serve checkout.
Is Copilot Autofix the same thing as GitHub Advanced Security?
No — Copilot Autofix is an AI remediation feature that works with CodeQL alerts generated by GitHub Code Security (one of the two products that replaced the older single “GitHub Advanced Security” bundle). You need Code Security enabled to get CodeQL alerts for Autofix to act on.
Can I use more than one of these tools together?
Yes, and many teams do — for example, running GitHub Advanced Security for native PR-level checks on GitHub-hosted repos while also running Semgrep for custom organization-specific rules, or layering Checkmarx’s ASPM over multiple scanners’ output for a single risk view.
Sources
- Semgrep — pricing page
- Checkmarx — pricing & packages page
- GitHub — Security features and pricing
- GitHub — plans and pricing
- Software Online Review — What OWASP’s Guidance Says About Securing AI-Generated Code in 2026
- Software Online Review — AI-Generated Code Security in 2026: The Risks, the Evidence, and a Review Checklist
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