layout: home title: Compare Buddy description: How Buddy compares to Renovate, Dependabot, CodeRabbit, Greptile, Qodo Merge, Graphite Diamond, Sourcery and Snyk — on hosting, pricing model, scope and what leaves your network.

hero: name: "compare" text: "Two categories, one binary" tagline: "Every tool below does part of what Buddy does. Most of them do it as a hosted service that installs an app on your repository and charges per developer. Buddy is a CLI that runs in the pipeline you already own." announcement: tag: "fair play" text: "Where a competitor is the better choice, each page says so" link: "#honest" actions: - theme: brand text: Get Started link: /guide/getting-started - theme: alt text: Browse the features link: /features/ code: - file: "the short version" lang: "ascii" content: | __ (,------'()'--o what buddy replaces (_ ___ /~" ()) ())

      code review     CodeRabbit, Greptile,
                      Qodo Merge, Graphite
                      Diamond, Sourcery
      dependencies    Renovate, Dependabot
      advisories      part of Snyk / Dependabot
                      security updates
      workflow audit  a separate SAST tool

      hosting         your CI runner
      pricing         MIT + your model tokens
      data egress     your provider, or none

features:

• title: "Buddy vs Renovate" icon: "🔄" details: "The closest dependency-side comparison. Renovate is excellent and configurable; Buddy adds code review, gates and CI repair, and imports your renovate.json." link: /compare/renovate linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs Dependabot" icon: "🤖" details: "Free and built into GitHub. Buddy trades that convenience for more ecosystems, real grouping, a dashboard — and a reviewer." link: /compare/dependabot linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs CodeRabbit" icon: "🐇" details: "The best-known hosted AI reviewer. The difference is where the diff goes, who pays for the tokens, and whether dependencies are in scope." link: /compare/coderabbit linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs Greptile" icon: "🧬" details: "Greptile indexes your whole codebase for cross-file context. Buddy stays diff-scoped and keeps the index — and the code — on your side." link: /compare/greptile linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs Qodo Merge" icon: "🧩" details: "The other open-source-rooted reviewer. Similar philosophy on self-hosting; different scope, and Buddy carries the dependency half." link: /compare/qodo linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs Graphite Diamond" icon: "💎" details: "Diamond is review inside a stacked-PR platform. If you want the platform, take it — Buddy is the reviewer without the workflow migration." link: /compare/graphite linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs Sourcery" icon: "🧪" details: "Sourcery grew out of refactoring suggestions. Buddy is a general reviewer with a dependency bot and merge gates attached." link: /compare/sourcery linkText: "Read the comparison"
• title: "Buddy vs Snyk" icon: "🛡️" details: "Snyk is a security platform with far more depth on vulnerability data. Buddy covers the overlap — advisories, licences, EOL — as blocking gates." link: /compare/snyk linkText: "Read the comparison"

At a glance

Rows marked n/a mean the product has no AI component, so the question does not apply. Competitor capabilities are summarised at category level and change often — check their own documentation before making a decision on any single row.

The three questions that usually decide it

Where does the diff go? A hosted reviewer needs an app installed on your repository, with read access to your source, and your diffs pass through its infrastructure. Buddy is a step in your workflow: the diff goes from your runner to the model provider you chose, and nowhere else. Run --light and it goes nowhere at all.

What are you paying for? Hosted reviewers price per developer, so the cost scales with headcount whether or not a given engineer opened a pull request that month. Buddy is MIT-licensed; you pay model tokens on your own account, at your own rate, on the runs you actually made.

How many tools is this? Most teams currently run a reviewer and a dependency bot — two vendors, two security reviews, two invoices, two configuration languages. Buddy is one binary and one config for both halves, and either half works alone.

Where Buddy is not the answer

Each comparison page has a section saying plainly where the other tool is the better fit, because a comparison that never concedes anything is an advertisement. The short version:

• You want zero setup and never to think about it. Dependabot is one file and it is already installed.
• You need whole-repository semantic context in review, not diff-scoped review. Greptile is built around that.
• You have already adopted a stacked-PR workflow. Graphite's reviewer fits inside a platform you are already paying for.
• You need a security platform, with SCA, SAST, container and IaC scanning, a vulnerability database and reporting for auditors. Snyk is a different and much larger product than Buddy's security features.

Try it against your own repository

The honest comparison is the one you run yourself, and it costs nothing to start:

bun add -g @buddysh/buddy
buddy review --light        # no key, no account, no repository access
buddy scan                  # what is outdated, and what has an advisory
buddy security              # what your workflows would let a stranger do