Trivy vs Grype

Quick Verdict

Trivy is the Swiss Army knife — one binary that handles vulnerability scanning, IaC misconfigurations, secrets detection, and license compliance across containers, filesystems, git repos, and Kubernetes clusters. Grype is the sharpened blade — a focused vulnerability scanner with superior risk scoring that combines CVSS, EPSS exploit probability, and KEV catalog status. Pick Trivy for breadth, Grype for depth in vulnerability prioritization.

Feature Comparison

Trivy vs Grype: Head-to-Head

Scope

This is the most fundamental difference between the two tools. Trivy is a multi-scanner: vulnerabilities, IaC misconfigurations, secrets, and licenses. It scans containers, filesystems, git repos, VM images, and Kubernetes clusters. Run trivy fs --scanners vuln,secret,misconfig . and you get vulnerability matches, exposed credentials, and Terraform misconfigurations in a single pass.

Grype does one thing: vulnerability matching. It checks packages against known CVEs and reports what it finds. No IaC checks, no secrets scanning, no license compliance. If you need those, you bring in additional tools.

Trivy absorbed tfsec (the Terraform security scanner) and inherited its full check library. For teams that need IaC scanning alongside container vulnerability scanning, this consolidation is Trivy’s biggest practical advantage.

Risk Scoring and Prioritization

Grype has a clear edge here. Each finding includes a composite risk score from 0.0 to 10.0 that combines CVSS severity, EPSS score (30-day exploitation probability with percentile ranking), and KEV catalog status. Default sorting puts the most actionable findings first. You can also sort by severity, epss, kev, package, or vulnerability.

EPSS is a meaningful signal that CVSS alone does not capture. A critical-severity CVE with a 0.1% EPSS score is less urgent than a high-severity CVE with a 95% EPSS score that appears in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Grype surfaces this distinction clearly.

Trivy uses severity-based filtering (LOW, MEDIUM, HIGH, CRITICAL) from CVSS scores. You can filter by severity threshold to focus on what matters, but there is no composite risk score or EPSS integration. For teams that want to move beyond severity-only triage, Grype’s risk scoring is more useful.

SBOM Workflow

Both tools work with SBOMs, but Grype’s ecosystem is more tightly designed around them. Grype pairs with Syft, Anchore’s SBOM generator. The recommended workflow is: generate an SBOM with Syft once, then rescan it with Grype whenever the vulnerability database updates. This avoids re-analyzing the original image every time and makes scanning faster.

Grype accepts SBOMs in CycloneDX, SPDX, and Syft JSON formats. OpenVEX support lets you attach exploitability assessments to suppress findings your security team has already evaluated.

Trivy both generates and consumes SBOMs. It outputs CycloneDX and SPDX directly, which is useful for compliance and supply chain tracking. However, Trivy’s scanning workflow is more image-centric — most teams point it at an image rather than a pre-generated SBOM.

Container Image Scanning

Both tools scan Docker and OCI images effectively. Trivy supports Docker daemons, registries, OCI archives, and the Trivy Operator for continuous scanning inside Kubernetes clusters. Grype supports Docker daemons, registries, Docker archives, OCI directories, OCI archives, and Singularity images.

Coverage of OS packages and language ecosystems is similar. Both handle Alpine, Debian, Ubuntu, RHEL, CentOS, Amazon Linux, and SUSE. Grype adds Arch and Gentoo; Trivy adds Photon OS and Windows. Language ecosystem coverage is comparable, with both supporting the major package managers for Go, Java, JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Rust, PHP, and .NET.

Vulnerability Databases

Trivy uses its own trivy-db database maintained by Aqua Security, plus a separate trivy-java-db for JAR/WAR identification. The database updates daily.

Grype aggregates data from NVD, GitHub Security Advisories, Alpine SecDB, Debian Security Tracker, Red Hat Security Data, Ubuntu/Canonical, Amazon Linux (ALAS), and Oracle Linux (ELSA). The database updates daily via SQLite archives. Data processing runs through Vunnel, Anchore’s open-source vulnerability ETL tool.

Both databases are comprehensive. The aggregation approach differs — Trivy has a curated database while Grype pulls from multiple upstream sources — but practical coverage for common vulnerability queries is similar.

CI/CD Integration

Both tools provide strong CI/CD integration. Trivy has aquasecurity/trivy-action for GitHub Actions. Grype has anchore/scan-action@v7. Both output SARIF for GitHub and GitLab code scanning. Both support severity-based exit codes for build gating.

Trivy’s Kubernetes operator (trivy-operator) runs continuous scans inside clusters, which Grype does not offer. For Kubernetes-native teams, this is a significant workflow advantage.

Configuration is similar. Trivy uses trivy.yaml and .trivyignore. Grype uses .grype.yaml with ignore rules. Both support environment variables for CI configuration.

When to Choose Trivy

Choose Trivy if:

• You want one tool that covers vulnerabilities, IaC misconfigurations, secrets, and licenses
• Kubernetes cluster scanning with an operator for continuous assessment is part of your workflow
• SBOM generation (not just consumption) is a requirement
• Your team uses Terraform, CloudFormation, or Kubernetes manifests and wants IaC scanning alongside vulnerability checks
• You prefer a single binary that does everything rather than composing multiple tools
• You want the most popular open-source security scanner (31,700+ GitHub stars)

When to Choose Grype

Choose Grype if:

• Risk-based prioritization with EPSS and KEV data matters more than breadth of scanning types
• You want an SBOM-first workflow where you generate SBOMs with Syft and rescan them as databases update
• OpenVEX support for managing vulnerability exploitability assessments is part of your process
• You need a focused, fast vulnerability scanner without the overhead of additional scanning engines
• Your team already uses other Anchore tools (Syft, Grant) and wants ecosystem consistency

Both tools are free, open-source, and capable. Many teams start with Trivy for its breadth, then add Grype when they need better vulnerability prioritization. The two tools can even run in parallel — Trivy for IaC and secrets, Grype for vulnerability matching with risk scoring.

For more options, browse our SCA tools category.

Frequently Asked Questions

Written by

Suphi Cankurt

Suphi Cankurt is an application security enthusiast based in Helsinki, Finland. He reviews and compares 129 AppSec tools across 10 categories on AppSec Santa. Learn more.