gitleaks vs Cremit
gitleaks is fast, free and easy to wire into a pre-commit hook or a CI stage, which is exactly what it is for. It is a gate on one path. This page is about what a gate does not tell you.
At a glance
| Aspect | gitleaks | Cremit |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A fast scanner you run against git repositories and history | A continuous inventory of credentials across code, cloud storage and collaboration tools |
| Licence and cost | Open source and free | Free plan, enterprise license on request |
| Detection method | Regular expressions and entropy, configured in TOML | Pattern detection, then a check against the issuing service for types that support it |
| Is the finding still live | Not checked. A match is a match, revoked or not | Supported types are checked live, so revoked keys are told apart; other types are marked for manual review |
| Where it looks | git repositories and their history | Code hosts and GitHub Packages, plus AWS S3, Google Drive, Slack, Jira, Confluence and Notion: 10 sources |
| Ownership | Not tracked | An owner is tracked for each credential and can be reassigned |
| Rotation and offboarding | Out of scope | Tracks rotation age via AWS Secrets Manager (90-day default) and flags Ghost Keys whose owner has left, via SCIM; the rotation itself stays with your team |
| Speed | Very fast; designed to sit in a commit path | Scheduled scans in the background, plus a webhook check on GitHub pull requests. Nothing in the commit path |
What Cremit adds
These two do not really compete. One is a gate, the other is the picture behind it.
Verified where supported, so live keys come first
Without a check against the provider, a scanner cannot tell a live production key from one rotated two years ago. Both look the same in the output, and the triage cost is the same for each. Cremit runs that check for types that support it and marks the rest for manual review.
The surfaces git does not have
Credentials end up in tickets, wikis, chat threads and storage buckets. A git scanner cannot see any of that.
A record that persists
Each run of a scanner produces output. An inventory tells you what is new since last time and what has been sitting there for years.
Ownership and Ghost Keys
Each finding carries an owner and can be routed to them. Directory sync over SCIM flags keys whose owner has already left, and the AWS Secrets Manager view shows how long each stored secret has gone without rotation.
Nothing to maintain
Rules, allowlists and false-positive tuning stop being a file in your repository that someone has to keep current.
Where gitleaks is the better tool
For what it does, gitleaks is very good and costs nothing. Most teams should be running it.
Speed in the commit path
Fast enough to sit in a pre-commit hook without anyone noticing, which is where stopping a secret is cheapest.
Free and self-contained
A single binary, no service, no account, no data leaving your machine.
Configuration you control
A TOML file of rules and allowlists that lives in your repository and is reviewed like any other code.
Trivial to add to CI
A few lines in a workflow file and every push is checked. Adoption cost is close to zero.
Good for one-off history audits
Point it at a repository you just took over and get an answer in seconds.
Which one fits your team?
gitleaks is enough if...
- -You want a cheap gate that stops secrets in the commit path.
- -Your credentials really do stay inside git.
- -You have capacity to triage matches without verification.
- -Everything must stay on your own machines.
You need more than that if...
- -You want to know which findings still authenticate before spending time on them.
- -Credentials also live in storage, tickets, wikis and chat.
- -You want an owner attached to each finding, and to know which keys belong to people who have left.
- -You want the answer to stay current rather than be re-derived each time.
- -You need Korean-language product and ISMS-P alignment.
Written by Cremit. gitleaks is open source, free and genuinely fast, and running it as a pre-commit gate is a good idea whatever else you use — the two are complementary rather than alternatives. This page compares scope, not code quality. If any detail is wrong or out of date, email hello@cremit.io.
See it on your own estate
Connect your code hosts, cloud storage and collaboration tools and see which credentials are actually live. The free plan is self-serve, so no sales call is needed to start.
See other comparisons
Side-by-side comparisons of Cremit against the other NHI platforms.