Comparison
Driftlock vs Renovate: PR queue vs. self-hosted signed morning desk.
Renovate opens automated dependency-update pull requests across the monorepo at a schedule the team sets, and stops at the merge button. Driftlock reads the same signal surface — Renovate alerts, CI failure, CVE feed, on-call page — and turns each into one signed, audit-linked pull request on a protected branch, inside a hermetic sandbox that replays the original regression. The seven-column audit trail a Driftlock PR ships (alert id, sandbox run hash, SBOM hash, approver chain, signature, diff bytes, triage verdict) is the column set Renovate does not produce, and is the column set a SOC 2 reviewer, an internal auditor, or a regulated buyer's platform team will actually replay at the second call.
Trigger
Reads the Renovate alert alongside three other named signal sources (CI failure, CVE feed, on-call page) — one PR per signal, signed before the morning standup.
Audit
Seven per-PR columns — alert id, sandbox run hash, SBOM hash, approver chain, signature, diff bytes, triage verdict — replayable on your storage tier.
Identity
Cosign signing controller resident in your KMS or HSM, key rotation on your schedule, on Enterprise HSM-backed.
What this comparison covers
Renovate runs as an open-source PR automation tool the team self-hosts or delegates to a managed tenant. The PR table it produces is the surface operators already know: dozens of dependency-update PRs a week, each with a diff, a schedule tag, and a peer-reviewer queue. The merge decision, the CVE follow-up, the on-call rotation, and the SOC 2 evidence stop at the merger — there is no signed audit artefact per PR, and the rotation policy that triages them stays outside the table.
Driftlock reads the same Renovate alerts, the CI failure surface, the CVE feed, and the on-call page as input. Each trigger becomes one tested, signed pull request on a protected branch before the morning standup, with a seven-column audit trail a regulator replays on the customer's storage tier. The morning queue a SOC 2 reviewer signs is the same artefact a developer's reviewer signs — the comparison on this page is about the shape of the queue and the trace left behind it.
Feature-by-feature
Seven axes where the posture diverges.
The table names one row per axis — overnight cadence, per-PR SBOM delta, signing, merge audit trail, RBAC controls, SOC 2 posture, pricing model — and states both sides. No feature checklist, no marketing re-framing.
| Axis | Renovate | Driftlock |
|---|---|---|
Axis overnight cadence | Renovate Opens a Renovate PR per dependency at a schedule the team sets — cron, weekday, weekend — and waits for morning review. CI failure triage and on-call rotation are out of Renovate's scope. | Driftlock Takes the Renovate alert alongside the three other named signal sources (CI failure, CVE feed, on-call page). Each trigger becomes one tested, signed pull request on a protected branch before the morning standup. |
Axis per-PR SBOM delta | Renovate Renovate surfaces the dependency diff in the PR body — versions before and after, source registry, lockfile change — but does not emit a CycloneDX SBOM per PR or a per-PR SBOM hash recorded alongside the signature. | Driftlock Emits a per-PR CycloneDX SBOM delta with a sha256 hash recorded alongside the diff and the signature — the SBOM hash becomes one of the seven columns the audit trail replays, anchored at /docs/compliance#sbom-emission. |
Axis ed25519 / cosign signing | Renovate Renovate can sign commits via a setup key the team holds, but the key lives in Renovate's signing surface and is not natively bound to a customer-held cosign key, KMS, or HSM rotation schedule. | Driftlock Signs every pull request (Renovate-driven or otherwise) with the customer's cosign key, kept in the customer's KMS or HSM on Enterprise, with key rotation on the customer's schedule. The signing controller and Rekor inclusion log are surfaced at /docs/compliance#cryptographic-signing. |
Axis merge audit trail | Renovate Records the PR table on the source-control side and Renovate's own scheduler logs; replay requires GitHub or the Renovate control plane and does not natively separate trigger, sandbox hash, SBOM hash, and signature into replayable columns. | Driftlock Records seven per-PR columns (alert id, sandbox run hash, SBOM hash, approver chain, signature, diff bytes, triage verdict) replayable on the customer's storage tier without a Driftlock-managed control plane, captured at /docs/compliance#merge-audit-trail. |
Axis RBAC controls | Renovate Operates against the source-control permission model; trust assignments (allowed reviewers, automerge groups, rebase settings) are Renovate-shaped and not surfaced as an explicit 6 role × 11 action RBAC matrix. | Driftlock Carries an explicit RBAC matrix (admin, reviewer, approver, observer, plus two scoped roles) keyed to the customer's IdP, surfaced at /docs/compliance#rbac-matrix — every role-action combination is one config artefact, audit-log retention stays on the customer's storage tier. |
Axis SOC 2 + compliance posture | Renovate No native SOC 2 controls baked in; the platform team carries the SOC 2 evidence story and stitches the Renovate PR table into an attestation each cycle. | Driftlock Posts a SOC 2 Type I + Type II in window, anchored at /security#soc2-roadmap, with customer-managed keys, data-residency options, and air-gapped deployment tiers listed at /security#customer-managed-keys and /security#data-residency. |
Axis pricing model | Renovate Open-source, free to self-host; cost is the Renovate literal and the engineering labour to triage the PR queue the platform does not sign or shard. | Driftlock Per-deployment subscription priced against the engineering labour it replaces; the rate card is published at /pricing and the cost-comparison table at /pricing#cost-comparison models the swap against Renovate's literal and the on-call rotation the queue replaces. |
7 axes · posture-level · no feature checklist
Where Driftlock differs
Four posture-level differences worth naming.
One signed PR per signal, not a nightly PR table.
Driftlock turns each Renovate alert, CI failure, CVE feed hit, and on-call page into one tested, signed pull request on a protected branch. Renovate ships a PR table the team still has to triage.
A per-PR CycloneDX SBOM delta, recorded as a hash.
Every Driftlock PR carries a CycloneDX SBOM delta with a sha256 hash, recorded alongside the signature and the seven-column audit trail. Renovate surfaces the dependency diff in the PR body but does not emit a per-PR SBOM or signature pair.
RBAC is a config artefact, not a Renovate shape.
Driftlock's RBAC matrix keys 6 roles × 11 actions to the customer's IdP, each role surfaced as one config snippet. Renovate's permission surface is the source-control model; the role-action map is implicit and platform-team-stitched.
A SOC 2 posture, not a SOC 2 narrative.
Driftlock posts SOC 2 Type I + Type II in window with customer-managed keys, data residency, and air-gapped deployment. Renovate ships the source-control permission model and a self-host option — the SOC 2 evidence story is the platform team's to assemble each cycle.
See it on your stack
Compare on a real monorepo, not a slide deck.
The architecture page names the four signal sources the watcher reads; the governance page enumerates the seven per-PR columns a regulator replays. Point Driftlock at the Renovate alerts already firing in your monorepo on a ten-day scoped trial — you'll see the signed PRs Driftlock ships and the audit trail your reviewers sign.