GitHub Secret Scanning vs Cremit
GitHub scans what lives in GitHub, and for a GitHub-only estate that is often enough. The gap opens when credentials move somewhere else: a ticket, a wiki page, a storage bucket, a chat thread. This page is about where that line falls.
At a glance
| Aspect | GitHub Secret Scanning | Cremit |
|---|---|---|
| Where it looks | Repositories, and pushes to them, inside GitHub | GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket, plus GitHub Packages, AWS S3, Google Drive, Jira, Confluence, Notion and Slack: 10 sources in one scan |
| Cost | Free on public repositories; private repositories need the paid Secret Protection add-on | Free plan, enterprise license on request |
| Stopping a push | Push protection blocks a commit before the secret lands | No push gate. Cremit finds what is already there, across every connected surface |
| Is the finding still live | Partner program lets many providers revoke a leaked token automatically | Types that support verification are checked live against the service that issued them; other findings are marked for manual review |
| Who owns the credential | Not tracked | Ownership mapped so a finding has someone to route to |
| Rotation age and departed owners | Not part of the product | Rotation age tracked from AWS Secrets Manager against your policy; keys whose owner has left are flagged as Ghost Keys via SCIM. Rotating and revoking stays with your team |
| Korean market | English product and support | Korean product, ISMS-P mapping, local support |
What Cremit adds
GitHub covers GitHub well. These are the parts of the problem that sit outside it.
Credentials do not stay in code
A key pasted into a Jira ticket during an incident, written into a Confluence runbook, or left in an S3 backup is invisible to a scanner that only reads repositories. Cremit connects those surfaces in the same scan.
History, not just the current push
Push protection stops the next secret. It does not answer what is already sitting in five years of commit history, and a secret deleted in a later commit is still in the history and often still valid.
A work list, not a finding list
For types that support verification, the match is checked against the issuing service, so keys that still authenticate are separated from ones revoked long ago. Types without a check are marked for manual review.
Ownership and Ghost Keys
Every finding carries an owner. With SCIM 2.0 or Google Workspace sync, a key whose owner has already left the company is flagged as a Ghost Key, and AWS Secrets Manager rotation age is reported against your policy. Rotating the key itself stays with your team; Cremit tracks the finding to closure with MTTR.
Beyond one code host
Estates rarely stay on one host. GitLab (including self-hosted), Bitbucket, AWS S3 and Google Drive are covered by the same scan.
Where GitHub is genuinely the right answer
GitHub secret scanning is good, and for a lot of teams it is the correct first move.
Push protection is free prevention
Blocking a secret before it ever reaches the remote is cheaper than finding it later. Nothing here replaces that; turn it on.
Zero integration work
It is already inside the platform your code lives on. No connection, no agent, no procurement.
Provider auto-revocation
The partner program means a leaked token from a participating provider can be revoked by that provider automatically, sometimes within minutes.
Free for open source
Public repositories get it at no cost, which is exactly where accidental exposure is most dangerous.
Which one fits your team?
GitHub secret scanning is enough if...
- -All your code is on GitHub and stays there.
- -Your main goal is preventing new secrets from being pushed.
- -You have a process for triaging and rotating what it reports.
You need more than that if...
- -Credentials also live in Slack, Jira, Confluence, Notion, Google Drive or AWS S3.
- -You want to know which findings still authenticate, not just which strings matched.
- -You need an owner attached to each finding, and to know when that owner has already left.
- -You run more than one code host, or need to know what a leaked AWS or GCP key can actually reach.
- -You need Korean-language product and ISMS-P alignment.
Written by Cremit. GitHub secret scanning and push protection are good, free on public repositories, and we recommend turning them on regardless of what else you run. This page compares scope, not quality. Details of GitHub plans and features change; if anything here is out of date, email hello@cremit.io and we will correct it.
See it on your own estate
Connect your code hosts, AWS S3, Google Drive and collaboration tools and see which findings are actually live. Free plan, no sales call needed to start.
See other comparisons
Side-by-side comparisons of Cremit against the other NHI platforms.