Rethinking SCA Pricing

The statement echoed across our customer interviews was striking in its clarity: "Probably the worst model I've seen in the industry."

This wasn't about product features or usability — it was about pricing. Specifically, how Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools are priced in ways that create financial barriers (and dare I say, exploitation?) to securing open-source dependencies.

In the process of building DeepSource SCA, we spoke with hundreds of security and development teams. One enterprise security leader explained how scanning their repositories would cost "hundreds of thousands of dollars" under current pricing models, making comprehensive security coverage financially unsustainable.

There has to be a better way.

Why current pricing models are broken

The SCA market is dominated by established players using similar pricing models that fundamentally misalign with how modern software is built:

• Per-developer licensing: Most leading tools charge per contributing developer, with costs starting around a few hundred dollars for small teams and quickly scaling to tens of thousands for larger organizations
• Bundled pricing models: Many vendors bundle SCA with other capabilities you may not need, forcing you to pay for unused features
• Pricing cliffs: Some vendors use tiered pricing with steep jumps as you cross thresholds, creating budget uncertainties
• Enterprise premiums: One customer noted paying over 300% more for "enterprise features" that should be standard for any security-conscious organization

This creates a disconnect between cost and value: most SCA tools don't account for how your team actually uses dependencies. A small team with complex dependency trees might need more robust scanning than a large team with simpler dependencies. Shouldn't your SCA investment reflect your actual security needs rather than just team size?

Pricing from first principles

When building DeepSource SCA, we returned to first principles. We asked: what is the actual unit of work in dependency scanning?

The answer is simple: the manifest files that define your dependencies. Each package.json, go.mod, requirements.txt, or pom.xml represents a concrete set of dependencies that need analysis.

That's why we're choosing a transparent, per-target pricing model for DeepSource SCA. where a target is a manifest file in your repository.

This approach solves real problems that customers have consistently faced:

Complete pricing transparency

Trust begins with transparency. With per-target pricing:

• You know exactly how many manifest files you have — you can count them, or approximate them based on the number of active repositories
• Your costs scale linearly with actual usage
• No surprise bills when you add new team members

Alignment with modern development

Modern development takes many forms:

• Monorepos: A single repository with hundreds of developers but perhaps only a few dozen manifest files
• Microservices: Hundreds of small repositories with multiple teams contributing
• Automation: Code committed by service accounts (and now AI agents), not just developers
• Shifting team structures: Developers moving between projects while codebases remain stable

Per-target pricing works naturally with all these patterns rather than imposing artificial constraints.

Cost predictability at scale

Let's examine a real-world example:

An enterprise with 500 developers working on a platform with 75 distinct services, each with an average of 2-3 manifest files (total: ~200 targets):

• With traditional per-developer pricing at $50/developer/month: $25,000 monthly
• With per-target pricing focused on what you're actually securing: A fraction of that cost

The cost disparity grows even more dramatic as the organization scales. Add 100 more developers to the same codebase:

• Per-developer pricing: $30,000 monthly (20% increase)
• Per-target pricing: No change (same number of targets)

No administrative overhead

Our research revealed "ambiguity in license calculation" and "unclear definition of 'contributing developer'" as common complaints across multiple tools.

Per-target pricing eliminates these debates entirely:

• No tracking which developers are "contributing"
• No reconciling headcounts across teams
• No negotiating when contractors or temporary staff join projects
• No penalty for collaborative development practices

Encourages security best practices

When security costs are tied to developers, there's a perverse incentive to limit who has access to security tools. Per-target pricing removes this barrier, encouraging:

• Broader access to security information
• More collaborative remediation
• Security as an organizational capability, not a specialized function

The Unified Platform advantage

DeepSource SCA doesn't exist in isolation — it's part of our unified DevSecOps platform. This integration creates compounding benefits:

1. Consolidated security coverage: SAST, SCA, and code quality in one platform means you're not juggling different pricing models for different aspects of code security.
2. Streamlined procurement: With a unified platform, you're not just saving on the tools themselves, but on the integration and workflow costs that multiple vendors create.
3. Scale without penalties: As your organization grows and your security needs evolve, the economics of your security tools should scale predictably.

Breaking out of the SCA pricing trap

The traditional SCA pricing model creates a trap:

You adopt a tool when your team is small and costs seem reasonable -> As your team grows, costs escalate dramatically -> Switching costs become prohibitive due to integration and workflow dependencies -> You're stuck paying increasingly unjustifiable prices

DeepSource's per-target pricing breaks this cycle. Your costs grow only when your actual security needs grow — not when your team does. We're fundamentally rethinking how security fits into the development lifecycle — starting with how it's priced. We invite you to experience what security tools should have been all along: transparent, fair, and aligned with how you actually build software.

Request early access to DeepSource SCA and experience what happens when security pricing actually makes sense.