Is Snyk Agent Scan free?
It is free with a Snyk token, with an enterprise tier available through Snyk Evo.
Beam vs SNYK
Beam vs Agent Scan
Snyk Agent Scan is the more established scanner: free with a Snyk token, open-source at the core, descended from Invariant's mcp-scan which Snyk acquired in June 2025, and deployable to a fleet through MDM. Beam's scanning is comparable table stakes; what Beam adds is a continuous local activity timeline alongside it. Beam's scanning is heuristic and will produce false positives.
Beam vs Agent Scan, side by side
Details below are drawn from a September 2026 review of the AI agent security market. Some figures are vendor-sourced or analyst estimates, and this is a fast-moving space — check with each vendor before you buy.
| Beam | Agent Scan (Snyk) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Local-first activity monitor and pre-run scanner for AI coding agents. Early prototype. | Scanner for MCP servers and skills, from Snyk's developer security platform. |
| Monitoring | Shell commands, file changes, tool calls, network endpoints and browser actions from harnesses such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, normalised into local NDJSON with risk flags and evidence attached. | Scanning rather than continuous activity monitoring, with an MDM-deployable background mode. |
| Skill / MCP scanning | Yes. SKILL.md files and MCP configurations are scanned before you run them, using 11 heuristic patterns plus an MCP version-pin check. | Yes, and it is the point of the product: MCP servers and skills are checked for prompt injection, tool poisoning and secrets. |
| Blocking / enforcement | No. Beam observes and flags. It never allows or denies an action. | Not applicable — it is a scanner. |
| Individual use | Runs locally for one person on one machine. Shared teams, fleet rollout and approvals are not built yet. | Free with a Snyk token. |
| Deployment | A local collector plus a local interface. No MDM package, no central console, no SSO, no SOC 2, no SIEM forwarding. | Command-line scanner, plus a background mode deployable through MDM. |
| Source / licence | Not open source today. | Open-source core, formerly Invariant's mcp-scan, acquired by Snyk in June 2025. |
| Pricing | Not published. | Free with a Snyk token; enterprise tier through Snyk Evo. |
Agent Scan in numbers
As reported in our source research. Some figures are estimates.
- Origin
- Invariant's mcp-scan, acquired by Snyk in June 2025
- Source
- Open-source core
- Cost
- Free with a Snyk token; enterprise via Snyk Evo
Where Agent Scan does more
- It is free, has an open-source core, and comes from a vendor security teams already run.
- An MDM-deployable background mode means it can be rolled out to a fleet. Beam cannot.
- It fits an existing Snyk workflow, so there is no new vendor to approve.
Where Beam differs
- Beam pairs scanning with a continuous activity timeline, so a flagged skill and what an agent actually did sit in the same place.
- Beam runs entirely locally with credentials redacted before anything is written and no token required.
- Beam's scan covers skill files and MCP configurations with the same 11 heuristics and reports evidence inline.
Beam’s current gaps
- Beam observes and flags. It has no blocking or enforcement, so it cannot stop a destructive command.
- There is no MDM package, central console, SSO or SOC 2 report, so it is not ready for a managed fleet rollout.
- Scanning is heuristic pattern matching. It produces false positives, misses novel phrasing, and is not a guarantee of safety.
- Beam is early and has no published pricing. Every tool on this page is further along in at least one dimension.
Which one fits
If you only need to scan MCP servers and skills, Snyk Agent Scan is free, mature and probably already approved in your organisation. Beam is worth considering when you want the scan and the runtime timeline in one local tool.
FAQ
Where did Snyk Agent Scan come from?
It descends from Invariant's mcp-scan, which Snyk acquired in June 2025. Its core is open source.
How is Beam's scanning different?
Beam scans skill files and MCP configurations with 11 heuristic patterns plus a version-pin check, and shows the results next to a live activity timeline. It is heuristic triage, not a safety guarantee.
See how Beam works
Beam is an early, local-first prototype. Read what it actually does today before comparing it further.