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StackPatch vs Trivy — honest comparison

Trivy is Aqua Security's OSS vulnerability scanner. It's great at containers, IaC, and Kubernetes — those are different problems than “keep my Linux VPS patched.” This page is the side-by-side we'd want to read before paying us anything.

trivy.dev github.com/aquasecurity/trivy

Side-by-side feature matrix

Green = clear advantage. Red = clear disadvantage. Grey = neutral / depends. Email us if you spot an inaccuracy in the Trivy column — we'll fix it.

Dimension
Trivy
StackPatch
Price
Free, OSS (Apache-2.0)
$99 lifetime founder seat / monthly tiers
Source code
Public — github.com/aquasecurity/trivy
Closed source (bash + Python agent is plain text, read before pipe)
Setup time
5 min for a single scan; integration into CI/cron is your job
5 sec: curl scan.sh | bash; install.sh adds the cron + agent for you
Primary focus
Container images + IaC + Kubernetes manifests; OS scanning is one of many modes
Linux server / VPS host scanning — that's the whole product
OS coverage
Alpine, Amazon Linux, Debian, RHEL, Rocky, Ubuntu, Wolfi, etc.
Ubuntu + Debian + Alpine + AlmaLinux + Rocky Linux
Cron + alerting
You build it (or use Aqua's commercial tier)
Hourly inventory + 30-min CVE poll + email/webhook alerts on new findings
Audit URL
You generate JSON/SARIF; building a customer-facing report is your job
Public audit URL per server, share-as-you-are with prospects
Container scan
Excellent — pulls registry images, layered filesystem analysis
Inventory of Docker image names only; does NOT scan image contents
IaC scan
Yes — Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Helm, Dockerfile
Out of scope (V1)
Kubernetes
Yes (trivy k8s)
Out of scope (V1)
CVE database
Auto-updates via trivy-db (you maintain the local cache)
We run the pollers (USN, Debian, Alpine, OSV); you scan against fresh data with no maintenance
Best for
Engineering team that wants one OSS tool for containers + IaC + OS
Solo founder / 2-person SaaS that wants the answer in 5 min on a server

Pick Trivy if

Containers + IaC are the bigger problem.

  • You build container images and need to fail CI on vulnerable layers.
  • You run Kubernetes and want kubectl-friendly scan output.
  • You write Terraform / Helm / Dockerfile and want IaC misconfig scans alongside CVEs.
  • You have engineering time to wire scan results into your alerting.
Trivy install guide

Pick StackPatch if

Your problem is “keep my Linux VPS patched.”

  • You run 1–10 Linux servers (not k8s, not heavy container fleets).
  • You want hourly auto-scan + email/webhook alerts without writing the cron yourself.
  • You want a public audit URL to share with prospects during security due diligence.
  • You'd rather pay $99 once than spend a half-day building a Trivy + cron + alerting stack.
Run the free quickscan

Try the free quickscan before paying anyone — including us.

Reads only your distro / kernel / package list. Source rendered as plain text so you can read before piping.

Run the free quickscan See StackPatch ($99 lifetime)

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