GitHub Advanced Security vs Data Hogo (2026 Comparison)
GitHub Advanced Security costs $49/user/month and requires GitHub Enterprise. Data Hogo is $12–39/month flat. Honest comparison of features, pricing, and fit.
Rod
Founder & Developer
GitHub Advanced Security (GHAS) is GitHub's built-in security scanning platform. It's genuinely powerful. It's also $49 per active committer per month, requires GitHub Enterprise, and doesn't cover security headers or database rules. Data Hogo is $12/month flat, no enterprise plan required. Here's the honest comparison.
Prices verified March 2026.
What GitHub Advanced Security Actually Includes
GHAS is a bundle of three tools:
CodeQL — GitHub's static analysis engine. It builds a semantic model of your code and queries it for vulnerability patterns. This is meaningfully different from simple pattern matching: CodeQL can find vulnerabilities that span multiple files and function calls, tracking tainted data from source to sink. For complex injection vulnerabilities in large codebases, CodeQL finds things simpler tools miss.
Secret scanning — Scans commits and pull requests for known secret patterns (API keys, tokens, certificates) and alerts you when they're found. On public repos, basic patterns are free. Advanced Security adds extended patterns for private repos and the ability to push protection (blocking commits before they land).
Dependabot — Automated alerts when your dependencies have known vulnerabilities. Creates fix PRs automatically. Dependabot is actually free for all GitHub repos — you don't need GHAS for this. It's worth separating from the Advanced Security bundle in your evaluation.
What GHAS Doesn't Cover
This is the part that matters for most developers reading this.
Security headers — GHAS doesn't scan your deployed URL for missing or misconfigured HTTP security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy). These headers are part of your actual security posture. Missing them is an OWASP Security Misconfiguration finding.
Database rules — No Supabase RLS analysis, no Firebase security rules parsing. If you're building with Supabase and your RLS policies are misconfigured, GHAS won't catch it. This is often where the most critical vulnerabilities live in modern web apps.
Security score — GHAS produces findings, not a unified score. You see a list of alerts; you don't get a number that tells you how your overall security posture compares or trends over time.
Plain-English explanations — GHAS findings include the vulnerability type and a link to documentation. They don't give you a concise, plain-English description of what's wrong in your specific code and how to fix it for your specific situation.
Auto-fix PRs for code — Dependabot creates PRs for dependency updates. CodeQL does not generate fix code for the vulnerabilities it finds. You get the finding, not the fix.
Pricing Reality Check
| GitHub Advanced Security | Data Hogo | |
|---|---|---|
| Public repos | Free (CodeQL + basic secret scanning) | Free (3 scans/mo, 1 repo) |
| Private repos — entry | $49/committer/mo + GitHub Enterprise | $12/mo flat |
| 5 active developers | $245/mo + Enterprise plan cost | $12/mo |
| 10 active developers | $490/mo + Enterprise plan cost | $12/mo or $39/mo |
| Secrets detection | Yes (advanced on paid) | Yes |
| Dependency scanning | Yes (Dependabot — free) | Yes |
| Code scanning (SAST) | Yes (CodeQL — paid for private) | Yes (250+ Semgrep rules) |
| Security headers | No | Yes |
| Database rules (RLS) | No | Yes |
| Auto-fix PRs | No (only dep updates) | Yes (Pro plan) |
| Requires GitHub Enterprise | Yes (for private CodeQL) | No |
GitHub Enterprise adds approximately $19-21/user/month to the base GitHub cost before GHAS pricing. For a team of 5, you're looking at $245/month for GHAS plus the Enterprise plan uplift — potentially $340-400+/month total for the security features that aren't free.
What GHAS Does Better
Being direct: CodeQL is technically superior to Semgrep for certain vulnerability classes.
Semantic analysis that tracks data flow across files catches vulnerabilities that pattern-based rules miss. If your codebase has complex multi-file code paths — user input entering at route A, passing through service B, and hitting a database query at C — CodeQL is more likely to find the injection vulnerability than Semgrep pattern matching.
For large codebases (50+ engineers, millions of lines) where you have security engineers managing findings, CodeQL's depth is valuable.
GitHub-native integration is genuinely convenient. Findings appear as PR check annotations. You don't need to context-switch to a different dashboard. Security gatekeeping lives in the same place as code review.
Push protection — blocking commits containing secrets before they land — is a real security improvement over post-commit alerting. Data Hogo currently alerts after the fact; it doesn't block the commit.
What Data Hogo Does Better
Coverage of the full attack surface. Security headers and database rules aren't part of GHAS at any price. For a Vercel + Supabase app, these are often where critical vulnerabilities live. We've scanned repos where the code was clean but the Supabase RLS was off on the users table — all user data accessible by any authenticated user. GHAS wouldn't catch that.
Price for private repos. $12/month vs $245/month for a team of 5 (plus Enterprise). For a solo developer or a small team, this comparison isn't close.
No GitHub Enterprise requirement. Enterprise plans add procurement overhead, longer contract cycles, and an administrative surface most small teams don't need. Data Hogo connects to your repos through standard GitHub OAuth.
Plain-English findings. The explanation of what's wrong, why it matters, and how to fix it — in the context of your actual code — is different from a link to an OWASP article.
Auto-fix PRs on Pro. CodeQL finds problems but doesn't fix them. Data Hogo Pro generates an AI-powered fix and opens a PR. For a developer who is also the security reviewer, the time difference between "here's the problem" and "here's the fix, review and merge" is significant.
Scan your repo free — no GitHub Enterprise required →
Who Should Use Each
Use GitHub Advanced Security if:
- You're on GitHub Enterprise already (or need it for other reasons)
- Your team has 10+ active committers and you're budgeting for security tooling accordingly
- You have a security engineer who triages CodeQL findings
- You need push protection to prevent secrets from ever landing in the repo
- Complex multi-file vulnerability detection is your priority
- Compliance requirements specify GitHub-native tooling
Use Data Hogo if:
- You're on GitHub Free, Pro, or Team (no Enterprise plan)
- You're a solo developer or team under 10
- Your stack is Next.js, Supabase, Firebase, or similar
- You need security headers and database rule coverage alongside code scanning
- $12/month is what you want to spend, not $245+/month
- Auto-fix PRs matter to you — not just finding vulnerabilities but fixing them
Use both if:
This is a legitimate option. GHAS (or just the free Dependabot + public CodeQL) handles the GitHub-native PR check workflow. Data Hogo handles the broader attack surface — headers, database rules, and a unified security score. The overlap in code scanning means you'd get double coverage on the code layer, which isn't necessarily wasteful.
For more context on the full security scanner landscape, the security scanner comparison for 2026 covers additional tools alongside these two.
The Free Tiers Are Actually Different Products
One clarification worth making explicitly: the GHAS free tier and the Data Hogo free tier are aimed at different use cases.
GHAS free tier = public repos only with CodeQL and basic secret scanning. Excellent for open source projects.
Data Hogo free tier = 1 public repo, 3 scans/month, covering the full vulnerability surface. Designed for developers who want to evaluate the tool on a real project before committing.
If you have a public repo and want the deepest free SAST coverage, GHAS + CodeQL is the answer. If you want to check headers, DB rules, and a security score on your project, Data Hogo's free scan covers that.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does GitHub Advanced Security cost in 2026?
GitHub Advanced Security costs $49 per active committer per month for private repositories. It requires a GitHub Enterprise plan (which adds further cost). For public repositories, CodeQL and basic secret scanning are free. Dependabot is free for all repositories regardless of plan.
Is there a free alternative to GitHub Advanced Security for private repos?
Data Hogo's Basic plan is $12/month flat (no per-seat pricing) and covers private repositories with secrets detection, dependency scanning, code pattern analysis, config review, security headers, and database rules — with no GitHub Enterprise requirement. For pure SAST on private repos, Semgrep is free for teams under 10 contributors.
What is CodeQL and how does it compare to Semgrep?
CodeQL is GitHub's semantic analysis engine. It builds a queryable model of your codebase and finds vulnerabilities by traversing code relationships — not just matching patterns. This makes it better at finding complex multi-step vulnerabilities. Semgrep uses pattern matching, which is faster and easier to extend with custom rules but can miss vulnerabilities in complex code paths.
Does GitHub Advanced Security include Dependabot?
Dependabot alerts are free for all GitHub repositories regardless of plan. GitHub Advanced Security adds more advanced secret scanning patterns for private repos and CodeQL for private repos. Dependabot's automatic fix PRs are also available without Advanced Security.
Does Data Hogo work without GitHub Enterprise?
Yes. Data Hogo connects to any GitHub repository through GitHub's standard OAuth app or GitHub App installation — no GitHub Enterprise required. It works with GitHub Free, GitHub Pro, GitHub Team, and GitHub Enterprise accounts.
GitHub Advanced Security is the right tool for companies that need enterprise-grade security tooling with GitHub-native integration and have the budget for it. For everyone else — solo developers, small teams, bootstrapped projects — the $49/committer/month price is prohibitive for what you actually need. A $12/month scan that covers your headers and your database rules alongside your code often catches more that's actually exploitable than an enterprise scanner that misses half your attack surface.
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