Pretense vs Snyk Code
Snyk Code scans your codebase for security vulnerabilities. Pretense protects your codebase from AI tools that would expose it to third-party model providers. One finds bugs. The other stops IP theft.
Snyk Code
Snyk Code is a static application security testing tool. It analyzes your source code for security vulnerabilities like SQL injection, XSS, and insecure deserialization. It is a code quality and vulnerability tool, not an AI request protection tool.
Pretense
Pretense is an AI security proxy. It intercepts requests from AI coding tools to LLM providers, mutates proprietary identifiers before transmission, and reverses them in AI responses. It protects intellectual property and secrets from leaving your development environment.
Feature Comparison
Side-by-side view of how Pretense and Snyk Code compare on the capabilities that matter most to security teams.
Why Teams Switch from Snyk Code
Different tools for different problems
Snyk Code is the right tool for finding vulnerabilities in code you write. Pretense is the right tool for protecting code you share with AI tools. Security-mature teams use both: Snyk to find bugs before deployment, Pretense to ensure AI assistance does not expose IP to third parties.
The AI coding era requires new controls
Snyk Code was designed for the pre-AI era. The threat model it addresses does not include a developer sending 5,000 lines of proprietary code to an LLM. That threat requires a proxy-layer control. Pretense was purpose-built for this use case.
Prevent, not just detect
Snyk Code finds vulnerabilities and tells you to fix them. For the AI exposure problem, finding out that sensitive code was transmitted to an LLM is too late. Pretense prevents the transmission from containing real identifiers. Prevention is the only acceptable control for IP protection.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should my team use both Snyk and Pretense?
Yes. Snyk Code addresses code quality and vulnerability risks. Pretense addresses AI transmission risks. They solve different problems and are complementary. Many security teams use both.
Does Pretense catch insecure code patterns?
Pretense is not a SAST tool. It does not analyze code for vulnerabilities. It protects code identifiers from being exposed in LLM API traffic. For vulnerability scanning, pair Pretense with Snyk Code or a SAST tool of your choice.
What does Pretense actually block?
Pretense blocks two categories of data. First, secrets: API keys, tokens, connection strings, private keys (30+ patterns). Second, proprietary identifiers: function names, class names, variable names are mutated to synthetic tokens and reversed in AI responses.
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