Black Duck pricing is not published; it is a quote-only, annual-contract model negotiated primarily on the number of codebases you scan and the size of your team, and reported deals commonly land in the low tens of thousands of dollars per year for mid-sized organizations. If you are trying to budget for Black Duck's software composition analysis product, the honest starting point is that you will have to talk to sales, because there is no public price list and no self-serve tier.
This guide explains what actually drives the number, the ranges other buyers report, and how to run a procurement process that gets you a fair deal.
Why there is no public price
Black Duck (formerly part of Synopsys, now Black Duck Software) sells into the enterprise, and like most enterprise application security vendors it treats pricing as a negotiation rather than a menu. The vendor confirms this directly: pricing is available upon request, with no plans listed publicly. That is standard for the category — Snyk publishes some tiers, but Checkmarx, Veracode, and Fortify are all similarly quote-driven at the enterprise level.
The practical consequence is that two organizations of similar size can pay meaningfully different amounts depending on how they negotiate, what they bundle, and what competing quotes they bring to the table.
What drives the cost
From buyer reports and the vendor's own description, Black Duck SCA pricing is built on a few axes.
The dominant factor is the number of codebases (projects or applications) you analyze. Black Duck's model scales with how many distinct code bases you point it at, so a monolith and a fleet of 200 microservices are very different line items even at the same headcount.
Team size is the second axis. Contracts are shaped by how many developers or users touch the platform.
Module scope is the third. Black Duck sells more than dependency scanning — there are add-ons for license compliance depth, policy management, malware and secrets detection, and integrations. Each capability you switch on affects the quote.
Deployment and support tier round it out. On-premises or air-gapped deployments and premium support levels carry different costs than a standard hosted arrangement.
Ballpark numbers teams report
Because pricing is private, any figure is directional, not a quote. Aggregated negotiation data from procurement platforms puts the average Black Duck contract value around $47,000 per year, with buyers reporting roughly 20 percent average savings when they negotiate rather than accept the first quote. Smaller teams scanning a handful of codebases will land well below that average; large enterprises running Black Duck across hundreds of applications with premium support can run into six figures.
Treat these as order-of-magnitude signals. The only number that matters for your budget is the one on your own quote, and that quote is negotiable.
How to run the procurement
Do not walk into the conversation cold. A few moves consistently produce better outcomes.
Scope your codebase count precisely before you engage, because it is the primary pricing lever and vendors will size the deal to whatever number you volunteer. Know exactly how many applications genuinely need scanning versus how many you can consolidate.
Bring a competing quote. The category is crowded — Snyk, Checkmarx, Mend, and others all sell SCA — and a real alternative in hand is the single most effective lever on price.
Ask what is bundled versus add-on. A quote that looks reasonable can balloon once you discover the license-compliance depth or policy engine you assumed was included is a separate SKU.
Negotiate the ramp. Multi-year deals often carry discounts, but lock in a codebase-growth clause so that scaling from 50 to 150 applications next year does not trigger an uncapped renewal spike.
Is Black Duck worth it?
Black Duck's strength is deep open source license compliance and a large, curated knowledge base of components — historically its differentiator over pure vulnerability scanners. If your driver is legal and license risk in a large, acquisitive enterprise, that depth can justify the price. If your primary need is finding and fixing known CVEs in your dependencies quickly, you may get comparable vulnerability coverage from a more developer-friendly and more transparently priced tool.
That framing matters because the cost question is really a fit question. Run a proof of concept on a representative slice of your codebases and measure two things: does it catch the risks you care about, and does the workflow get adopted by developers? A cheaper tool that developers actually use beats an expensive one that lives in a portal nobody opens. Our SCA product overview walks through what to evaluate, and the pricing page shows how a usage-based model compares to a quote-only one.
FAQ
How much does Black Duck cost per year?
There is no published price. Reported contracts average roughly $47,000 per year, but actual cost depends heavily on how many codebases you scan, your team size, which modules you enable, and how hard you negotiate. Small deployments cost far less; large enterprise rollouts can exceed six figures.
Does Black Duck offer a free tier or trial?
Black Duck does not publish a free self-serve tier. Evaluation typically happens through a sales-arranged demo or proof of concept rather than an open free plan, so you will need to contact their team to get hands-on access.
What is the main pricing factor for Black Duck?
The number of codebases (applications or projects) you analyze is the dominant lever, followed by team size and the set of modules you enable. Scoping your codebase count accurately before engaging sales is the most important preparation step.
How does Black Duck pricing compare to alternatives?
Most enterprise SCA vendors — Checkmarx, Veracode, Fortify — are similarly quote-only, so Black Duck is not unusual. The practical difference is that some newer entrants publish usage-based pricing, which makes budgeting more predictable. Bringing a competing quote is the most reliable way to test whether your Black Duck price is fair.