Snyk is a great product, and this is not an argument that it is not. It is an argument that “Snyk vs Prbl” is slightly the wrong framing, because the two tools are built to catch different kinds of problems. Understanding which problem you have is the whole decision.
The split, in one line
Snyk is strongest at the supply chain: the open-source packages, containers, and infrastructure config you depend on. It tells you when a library you import has a known CVE. Prbl looks at the first-party code an AI tool generated for you, and flags the security mistakes those tools make: a hardcoded secret, an injection sink, a missing auth check, a weak random value. One watches the code you pulled in. The other watches the code the AI wrote.
Scan your own app for issues like these
Paste your live URL. We check what your app serves publicly for exposed keys and misconfigurations. No account, no install.
Why a dependency scanner misses AI mistakes
A hardcoded Supabase key is not a vulnerable dependency. A missing authorization check on a generated route is not a CVE in a package. AnAES misuse or a Math.random() token in your own code is not something a supply-chain scanner is looking for, because it is not in the supply chain. It is in the code your AI assistant handed you and you shipped. Across nearly 2,000 real apps we scanned, the dominant high-severity finding was a hardcoded secret in first-party code, exactly the category that lives outside a dependency scanner's field of view.
Why Prbl is not a dependency scanner
The reverse is just as true, and worth being honest about. Prbl does not maintain a database of known CVEs, and it will not tell you that the version of a library you pinned has a published advisory. That is Snyk's job and Snyk is very good at it. If your risk is “am I importing something vulnerable,” Prbl is not the tool. If your risk is “did the AI I let write half this app leave a hole in it,” it is.
Which one do you actually need?
- Reach for Snyk when you want continuous monitoring of dependency and container CVEs, license compliance, and infrastructure config across your whole stack.
- Reach for Prbl when a meaningful share of your code was written by AI tools and you want the specific issues those tools produce caught in your own source, with near-zero setup and low noise.
- Run both if you are shipping AI-assisted software to real users. They close different holes, and most teams that take security seriously end up wanting coverage of both the supply chain and the first-party code.
The quickest way to see the difference
Point Prbl at a repo you built with an AI tool and read the findings. If it comes back with a hardcoded secret or a missing auth check, that is a class of issue your dependency scanner was never going to raise, because it lives in the code you wrote, not the code you imported. The Prbl vs Snyk page has the quick side-by-side, and the free scan needs no account.
Common questions
What does Snyk scan that Prbl doesn't?
Snyk's primary strengths are dependency vulnerability scanning (known CVEs in npm, pip, Maven packages), container image scanning, and infrastructure-as-code misconfiguration. These are different surfaces from what Prbl scans. Prbl focuses on the code an AI tool wrote: hardcoded secrets, missing auth checks, JWT decode without verify, fallback credentials, and BOLA in API routes — patterns that don't appear in dependency databases.
What does Prbl scan that Snyk doesn't?
Prbl detects the security patterns AI coding tools (Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, Claude Code, Windsurf) introduce most often. These are not library vulnerabilities — they are first-party code issues: a JWT decoded without signature verification, a process.env.SECRET || 'fallback' pattern, a CRUD route missing an ownership check. Snyk's SAST has some overlap, but it produces high false-positive rates on these patterns in AI-generated code, because it was tuned for hand-written codebases.
Do I need both Snyk and Prbl?
Most teams using AI coding tools end up wanting both. Snyk covers the dependency and container surface. Prbl covers the first-party code surface that AI tools introduce. They scan different things with minimal overlap. Running both means a PR with a vulnerable dependency and a hardcoded secret gets flagged on both counts before merge.
Is Prbl free?
Yes — the GitHub Action that scans every PR and comments with findings is free. The scanner checks for hardcoded secrets, missing auth, fallback credentials, JWT handling issues, and more. No account required to start.