Aikido AI Code Review vs Gitleaks: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
Aikido AI Code Review is a commercial static application security testing tool by Aikido Security. Gitleaks is a free static application security testing tool. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best static application security testing fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Development teams shipping code at startup and SMB velocity will get immediate value from Aikido AI Code Review because its AI-generated PR comments catch logic bugs and performance issues before merge, compressing what would take a human reviewer 15 minutes into seconds. The tool covers NIST ID.IM (improvement processes) by making code quality feedback systematic and repeatable across your codebase, which matters more than detection scores when you're resource-constrained. Skip this if you need deep security-specific vulnerability scanning; Aikido is a code quality accelerant, not a replacement for SAST tools that hunt injection flaws and cryptographic weaknesses.
Development teams and startups with tight budgets should use Gitleaks because it catches hardcoded secrets in git repos before they reach production, and the 23,000-plus GitHub stars mean you're getting battle-tested detection rules maintained by a real community. It runs free and requires no infrastructure, so you can wire it into CI/CD in an afternoon. Skip this if your organization needs centralized secret management across multiple repositories and environments; Gitleaks finds leaks but doesn't rotate or remediate them.
