Best Secret Scanning Tools For 2025

Modern secret scanning tools focus on secrets management, rotation, and credentials protection. We reveal the cloud security industry’s best solutions that scan both public and private repositories. Safeguard forgotten or hard coded secrets before they are exposed.

In DevSecOps, secrets are used to authenticate user access and the key to securing sensitive data. The open nature of Git repositories combined with human negligence and social engineering practices lead to secret exposure on a scale we’ve never seen before. Hundreds to thousands of secrets have been known to be leaked and threat actors consistently use the latest Git scanning technologies to extract secrets from public repositories and exploit vulnerabilities.

The significance of Secret Scanning Tools cannot be overstated given the escalating threats encountered by web assets in the cyber world. Explore the top-rated Secret Scanning Tools that should be on your radar to protect your assets effectively in 2025.

What is Secret Scanning?

Secret scanning refers to the process of automatically detecting and identifying sensitive information, such as access tokens, API keys, and other confidential data, within code repositories and other data sources. It is a security practice that helps identify potential vulnerabilities and risks associated with unintentional exposure of secrets. 

Secret scanning tools and services are designed to scan and analyze code repositories, commit histories, and other sources to identify and alert on the presence of sensitive information. This process helps organizations proactively protect their sensitive data and prevent unauthorized access or misuse.

What are Secret Scanning Tools?

Secret Scanning Tools are software tools or services designed to search for and identify sensitive information, known as secrets, within code repositories, configuration files, and other digital assets. These tools aim to prevent accidental exposure or unauthorized access to credentials, API keys, tokens, and other confidential information that could be exploited by attackers.

Need for Secret Scanning Tools

Secret scanning tools play a crucial role in ensuring the security of sensitive information and preventing potential breaches. Some key reasons highlighting their need are:

• Protecting sensitive data: Secret scanning helps identify and secure sensitive information such as access tokens, API keys, and credentials. By detecting and mitigating potential vulnerabilities, organizations can prevent unauthorized access and protect their data from being compromised.
• Mitigating security risks: Secrets and credentials that are inadvertently exposed or leaked can pose significant security risks. Secret scanning plays a crucial role in early risk identification, enabling organizations to swiftly respond and mitigate potential threats before they can be exploited by malicious individuals.
• Compliance requirements: Many industries and regulatory frameworks have specific requirements for safeguarding sensitive data. Secret scanning assists in meeting compliance standards by proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities in code repositories and other data sources.
• Safeguarding infrastructure: When secrets are compromised, they can grant unauthorized access to vital systems and infrastructure. Regularly performing secret scanning enables organizations to detect vulnerabilities and maintain a secure and protected environment for their infrastructure. By proactively identifying and addressing potential security risks, organizations can safeguard their sensitive information and mitigate the potential impact of unauthorized access.
• Maintaining customer trust: Protecting sensitive information is crucial for maintaining customer trust. By actively scanning for secrets and taking necessary measures to secure them, organizations demonstrate their commitment to data privacy and security, enhancing customer confidence in their services.

Top 10 Secret Scanning Tools in 2025

Cloud security posture management tools and cloud-native application protection platforms include secret scanning capabilities. Based on the latest reviews and findings, here is a list of the best secret scanning tools in 2025:

#1 SentinelOne

SentinelOne can detect over 750 types of hardcoded secrets, including API keys, credentials, cloud tokens, encryption keys, and more—before they ever reach production. It can prevent cloud credentials and secret leakages. You can do GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket secret scanning, and it can help you rotate your secret keys to safeguard sensitive information. SentinelOne’s agentless CNAPP offers holistic security and can also perform internal and external cloud security audits.  Its patented Storylines™ technology can reconstruct historical artefacts and security events for deeper analysis. Purple AI can offer additional security insights after analysing data collected and cleaned up via SentinelOne’s threat intelligence.

SentinelOne can detect misconfigurations across popular services like GCP, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). It integrates directly into your CI/CD pipelines and also features Snyk integration. You can reduce alert fatigue, eliminate false positives, and address security gaps. SentinelOne can implement the best DevSecOps practices for your organization and can enforce shift-left security testing. You can tighten permissions and it can manage cloud entitlements.

You can do agentless vulnerability scanning and use its 1,000+ out-of-the-box and custom rules. SentinelOne also solves issues related to cloud repositories, container registries, images, and IaC templates. 

Platform at a Glance

• Singularity™ Cloud Native Security – You gain full visibility of your cloud environment and get comprehensive coverage. CNS can identify more than 750 types of secrets hardcoded across code repos. It can prevent them from leaking out. Its unique Offensive Security Engine™ can safely simulate attacks on cloud infrastructure to better identify truly exploitable alerts.
• Singularity™ Cloud Security Posture Management – SentinelOne CSPM can rapidly pinpoint misconfigurations and continually assess risk with automated workflows. You can secure your cloud footprint. It uses more than 2,000 policy assessments and always helps you stay in alignment with the latest industry and regulatory standards. CSPM also supports leading cloud service providers like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and more.
• Singularity™ Cloud Workload Security – SentinelOne CWS can fight against known and unknown threats. It secures cloud workloads and offers AI-powered runtime protection. You can root out threats and empower analysts with workload telemetry and AI-assisted natural language queries on a unified data lake.

Features:

• AI-Powered Runtime Detection: SentinelOne Singularity™ Cloud Workload Security helps you prevent ransomware, zero-days, and other runtime threats in real time. It can protect critical cloud workloads including VMs, containers, and CaaS with AI-powered detection and automated response. SentinelOne CWPP supports containers, Kubernetes, virtual machines, physical servers, and serverless. It can secure public, private, hybrid, and on-prem environments.
• CIEM: SentinelOne’s CNAPP can manage cloud entitlements. It can tighten permissions and prevent secrets leakage. Cloud Detection and Response (CDR) provides full forensic telemetry. You also get incident response from experts and it comes with a pre-built and customizable detection library.
• DevSecOps: SentinelOne can implement the best DevSecOps practices for your organization and can enforce shift-left security testing. You can do agentless vulnerability scanning and use its 1,000+ out-of-the-box and custom rules. SentinelOne also solves issues related to cloud repositories, container registries, images, and IaC templates.
• Attack Paths: Singularity™ Cloud Native Security (CNS) from SentinelOne is an agentless CNAPP with a unique Offensive Security Engine™ that thinks like an attacker, to automate red-teaming of cloud security issues and present evidence-based findings. We call these Verified Exploit Paths™. Going beyond simply graphing attack paths, CNS finds issues, automatically and benignly probes them, and presents its evidence.
• Purple AI™: Context-aware Purple AI™ provides contextual summaries of alerts, suggested next steps and the option to seamlessly start an in-depth investigation aided by the power of generative and agentic AI – all documented in one investigation notebook.
• Agentless CSPM: SentinelOne’s Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) supports agentless deployment in minutes. You can easily assess compliance and eliminate misconfigurations.
• External Attack and Surface Management (EASM): SentinelOne can go beyond CSPM protection. It does automated pen-testing and exploit path discovery. It also helps with unknown cloud and asset discovery.
• Offensive Security Engine™: Its unique Offensive Security Engine™ with Verified Exploit Paths™ lets you stay multiple steps ahead of attackers and predicts their moves before they can make them.
• Secret Scanning: Real-time secret scanning can detect over 750+ secret types and cloud credentials in public repositories. SentinelOne offers agentless vulnerability management and comes with a CWPP agent that can mitigate various runtime threats,
• Over 2,000+ out-of-the-box checks: You can define and enforce custom compliance and policy controls. SentinelOne supports frameworks like HIPAA, CIS Benchmark, NIST, ISO 27001, SOC 2, and more.
• KSPM – SentinelOne can do misconfiguration checks and help with compliance standard alignment for Kubernetes environments. It also takes care of your container security and protects Kubernetes pods and clusters.
• AI-SPM: SentinelOne’s AI Security Posture Management feature can help you discover AI pipelines and models. It can configure checks on AI services. You can also leverage Verified Exploit Paths™ for AI services.
• Graph Explorer: You can visually map cloud, endpoint, and identity assets. SentinelOne’s Graph Explorer helps determine blast radius and impact of threats. It can also track and correlate alerts from different sources and does graph-based asset inventory management.

Core problems that SentinelOne Eliminates

• Finds out about unknown cloud deployments and fixes misconfigurations. Can resolve issues with cloud workloads as well.
• Can prevent alert fatigue and eliminate false positives by providing evidence of exploitability. SentinelOne can also prevent secrets leakage and cloud credentials leaks.
• Addresses security skills shortage via Purple AI which is your gen AI cybersecurity analyst; SentinelOne  also provides up-to-date and global threat intelligence
• Combats ransomware, zero-days, phishing, and fileless attacks. Can fight against shadow IT attacks, social engineering, and insider threats
• Stops the spreading of malware and eliminates advanced persistent threats.
• Resolves inefficient security workflows; can also streamline workflows and accelerate response to security incidents with built-in, no-code Hyperautomation
• Identifies vulnerabilities in CI/CD pipelines, container registries, repos, and more
• Prevents unauthorized data access, privilege escalations, and lateral movement. 
• Eliminates data silos and solves multi-cloud compliance issues for all industries.

Testimonials

“Until we integrated SentinelOne’s secret scanning feature, our security team constantly battled with mismanaged secrets and hard-coded credentials. Within days of integrating this feature, we found hundreds of vulnerabilities across multiple repositories, including API keys and cloud access tokens. We loved SentinelOne’s Snyk integration and CI/CD pipeline security. It has allowed us to automate secret scanning so no keys end up getting pushed accidentally during development. Purple AI and Binary Vault have been game-changers for us, providing insights that were previously missed. It has saved us from  disastrous breaches.”

Look at Singularity™ Cloud Security’s ratings and reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and PeerSpot for additional insights.

#2 Spectral Secret Scanning

Tools for secret management are great for keeping everything in one location. Development teams can access a centralized view of the secrets that are currently being used, thanks to them. However, using only covert management techniques is not advisable. A safe SDLC must include secret scanning to prevent leaks that secret management tools cannot identify.

The Spectral Secrets Scanner is a scanning tool for secrets that notifies you of any secrets or vulnerabilities in your infrastructure and software. It enables you to keep an eye on, categorize, and safeguard your infrastructure, assets, and code against exposed API keys, tokens, credentials, and high-risk security flaws.

Features:

• Locates secrets (such as API keys and credentials) in infrastructure-as-code files and code repositories.
• Policies that can be customized: Users can create their own rules and policies for secret detection. 
• Automates secret scanning for the creation process and adapts scanning to different security needs.

You can check out Spectral’s secret scanning capabilities by reading its ratings and reviews on SourceForge.

#3 AWS Secret Scanner

AWS is aware of how important it is to maintain the safety and control of secrets. You can easily rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and passwords with AWS Secrets Manager. Utilizing AWS Secrets Manager is considerably simpler to incorporate into your workflow if your software development procedures and applications are already a part of the AWS ecosystem of services.

Secrets encryption, Secrets Manager APIs, and client-side caching libraries are all features of AWS Secrets Manager. When an Amazon VPC is set up with endpoints, the traffic is also kept inside the AWS network.

Features:

• Automated Scanning
• Users can create unique rules to tailor scans to certain requirements.
• Aids in preventing unintentional disclosure of sensitive data.
• Applies security automation and fine-tunes itself to meet different security requirements.

AWS Security Hub can access the secrets manager and scan for secrets. You can see how effective it is by reading the reviews and ratings on PeerSpot.

#4 GitHub Secret Scanning

For the code you create on GitHub, GitHub Secret Scanning functions as an automatic security guard. It scans your code for sensitive data like keys or passwords. It operates in real-time and notifies you if it locates something, which is quite useful. However, it is limited to GitHub projects and might miss some secrets.

Features:

• Real-time scanning for exposed secrets 
• Customizable alerts 
• Seamless integration with GitHub repositories.

You can see how GitHub fares as a secret scanning solution and know about its features by reading its reviews on PeerSpot.

#5 GitGuardian

A program called GitGuardian scans your code for hidden information, notably in Git projects, like having a personal investigator to look into your secrets. It may be tailored to your needs and is extremely detailed. It’s not free, though, and occasionally it might assume something is a secret that isn’t.

Features:

• Secret detection
• Customizable policies
• Integrations with popular development platforms
• Enough coverage and adaptable rule sets

Assess GitGuardian’s capabilities as a secret scanner by reading its PeerSpot reviews.

#6 Gitleaks

Your Git code’s equivalent of a secret-spotting robot is Gitleaks. By establishing rules, you can educate it on how to locate secrets. Even offline use is possible, which is useful. However, configuring it can be a little challenging, and occasionally it may make mistakes and believe something to be a secret when it is not.

Features:

• Customizable rules
• Offline scanning
• Cross-platform support

Gitleaks is a part of GitHub. Learn how it is a secret scanning solution and know about its features by reading its reviews on PeerSpot.

#7 Git-Secrets

Git-secret is a tool for managing API secrets, however, it’s not limited to just managing API keys. You can encrypt/decrypt any files as you push to/pull from source control with this git extension.

Features:

• Simple setup process
• Community-driven development:

• Ease of use, open-source, and community contributions.

#8 Whispers

Whispers is an open-source static code analysis tool made to look for risky routines and hardcoded credentials. 

It can be incorporated into your CI/CD pipeline or used as a command-line tool. YAML, JSON, XML, npmrc, .pypirc, .htpasswd, .properties, pip.conf, conf / ini, Dockerfile, Shell scripts, Python3 (as AST), as well as declaration and assignment formats for Javascript, Java, GO, and PHP, are all parseable by the tool.

Features:

• Lightweight, open-source, and community-contributed.

• Simple UI, open-source, and community-driven improvements.

#9 HawkScan

HawkScan is a security scanning tool designed specifically for containerized systems. One of its capabilities is secret scanning. The security of container images is the main focus, and vulnerabilities and exposed secrets are checked. 

Features:

• Container image scanning
• CI/CD integration
• Secret detection
• Holistic container security

#10 TruffleHog 

An open-source program called TruffleHog searches your surroundings for hidden information such as SSH private keys, API keys, database passwords, authentication/access tokens, cloud credentials, and more. Every time modifications are made, it may continuously run scans in the background and alert you when secrets are discovered. With 600+ secret-type detectors and automatic API validation, TruffleHog v3 is a total rebuild in Go that makes the tool faster and more effective.

Features:

• Simplicity
• Open-source codebase 
• Customizable and adaptive

How to Choose the Right Secret Scanning Tool?

Here’s how you can go about choosing the best secret scanning tool for your organization:

• Cost: Consider the affordability of the shortlisted secret scanning tools for your organization’s online security requirements. Look for companies that offer flexible pricing options tailored to your needs or provide budget-friendly packages suitable for your company size.
• Features: Evaluate the features offered by the secret scanning tools under consideration to determine the most suitable choice. Key features to look for include:
  • Accurate Vulnerability Detection: The secret scanning tools should effectively test and assess various types of assets, including web or mobile apps, APIs, networks, and cloud infrastructure, for a wide range of vulnerabilities.
  • Continuous Scanning: Ensure the secret scanning tools offer continuous monitoring and scanning capabilities to identify any hidden or newly emerging vulnerabilities.
  • Vulnerability Management: Verify that the secret scanning tools offer a comprehensive vulnerability management function that covers both the detection and remediation of flaws.
  • Scalability: Choose secret scanning tools that can scale effectively to accommodate the scanning needs of your assets.
• Compliance: Consider the compliance requirements catered to by the secret scanning tools in question. Do they provide compliance-specific scans and customized compliance reports based on the regulations you need to test for? Important compliance standards to consider include PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC2, GDPR, and ISO 27001.

Conclusion

In this article, we have provided a comprehensive review of the top 10 Secret Scanning Tools. We have discussed their features, pros, and cons. Additionally, we have outlined important factors to consider when selecting Secret Scanning Tools. By following these steps and considering the information provided, you can make an informed decision to choose the most suitable secret scanning tools for your specific needs.

FAQs

How do secret scanning tools help prevent security breaches?

Secret scanning tools scan code repositories, configurations, and other storage locations to identify sensitive information, such as API keys, passwords, and tokens. An organization can remove or encrypt such secrets before a malicious actor can exploit those vulnerabilities, thus preventing security breaches.

Can secret scanning tools integrate with CI/CD pipelines?

Many secret scanning tools can be easily integrated with CI/CD pipelines for real-time code scanning; they are written and deployed in a manner that alerts vulnerabilities in exposed secrets without slowing down development.

What are the key features to consider when selecting a secret scanning tool?

To select the right secret scanning tool, consider the following key attributes:

• Accuracy and Reliability: the tool should be able to detect a large number of secrets with minimal false positives
• Integration capabilities: it should easily integrate with your existing development tools and workflows; this includes CI/CD pipelines and your code repositories
• Continuous Monitoring: provides real time scanning to expose the secret as early as possible.
• Customization: This can define custom patterns and rules unique to your organizational needs.
• Alerts and Reporting: Clear notifications and detailed reports allow quick remediation of problems.
• Support and Maintenance: Provided with regular updates and support sensitive to any issues that may arise.

Differences between open-source and enterprise secret scanning tools

Most open-source secret scanning tools are free but generally allow customization. Thus, they are quite suitable and affordable for small-scale or unsophisticated organizations, provided they have little cash to spare and the competence to run and maintain their tool. However, its additional features, comprehensive support, and updating may require more effort.

Enterprise secret scanning tools are more expensive but have more features: dedicated customer support, regular updates, scalability for large organizations, advanced integration options, and compliance management features. They are also easier to deploy and manage, making them better suited for organizations requiring a turnkey solution with professional support.