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Brakeman

Brakeman is a static analysis security vulnerability scanner for Ruby on Rails applications, run from the command line without needing the app to be running.

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Introduction

Brakeman is a static analysis security vulnerability scanner built specifically for Ruby on Rails applications. It scans the application’s source code, so it can run at any stage of development without a running server.

The source code is at presidentbeef/brakeman on GitHub under the Brakeman Public Use License licence, with about 7,300 stars; the most recent commit was on 22 October 2026.

Features

  1. Rails-aware: Understands Rails conventions, controllers, models and views.
  2. Common vulnerability checks: SQL injection, XSS, command injection, mass assignment and more.
  3. Confidence levels: Rates each warning.
  4. Ignore file: Track accepted warnings.
  5. Report formats: Text, JSON, HTML and others.

Pros

  1. Free to use: Open source under Brakeman Public Use License.
  2. Maintained: Commits as recent as 22 October 2026.
  3. Community: About 7,300 GitHub stars.

Cons

  1. Rails only: Not for general Ruby or other stacks.
  2. Licence terms: Distributed under the Brakeman Public Use License, not a standard OSI licence; read it before commercial redistribution.
gem install brakeman
brakeman -o report.html

Resources:

Pricing

Brakeman is free to use under the Brakeman Public Use License; see the repository for terms.

  1. Rails teams wanting security checks in CI.
  2. Security reviewers auditing Rails apps.
  3. Not a fit outside Rails.

Conclusion

Brakeman is the standard security scanner for Ruby on Rails.

Alternatives

Other tools on CheckOps that cover similar ground. Open a page, or compare one with Brakeman side by side.