Architecture comparison

Stella Ops vs Trivy

Trivy provides fast vulnerability detection for container artifacts.
Stella adds promotion gating, reachability filtering, and replayable release evidence.

Last reviewed: 2026-02-10

Decision criteria

How this comparison is evaluated

Each vendor page is scored against the same five technical dimensions for consistent decision support.

Deployment model: Target coverage, self-hosting posture, and runtime assumptions.
Evidence model: How decisions are justified, signed, and exported for review.
Replayability: Ability to re-run historical decisions with identical inputs.
Offline capability: Behavior in disconnected or sovereign environments.
Policy model: Gate expressiveness, explainability, and workflow integration.

Proof and methodology links: Full market matrix | Evidence and Audit | Operations and Deployment | Decision Capsule spec

Scope difference

Both tools can identify vulnerabilities. This comparison covers what happens at promotion time and during audit response.

Trivy: "openssl 3.0.1 has CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability-2024-1234" → You investigate
Stella Ops: "openssl 3.0.1 has CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability-2024-1234, but your code never calls the vulnerable function" → Case closed

Dimension-by-dimension comparison

Decision dimension	Trivy	Stella Ops
`SBOM?Software Bill of Materials - a complete list of all packages and dependencies in your software` generation `SBOM?Software Bill of Materials - a complete list of all packages and dependencies in your software`	Yes	Yes
`CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability` detection `CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability`	Yes	Yes
Multi-source advisories	Yes	Yes (30+)
Offline operation	Yes	Yes
`Reachability?Analysis that proves whether vulnerable code is actually called by your application — filtering out false positives from scanner noise` analysis	No	Yes
Deterministic replay	No	Yes
Audit-ready evidence	No	Yes
`VEX?Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange - machine-readable statements about whether vulnerabilities are actually exploitable in your context` support	Partial	Full (`OpenVEX?An open standard format for VEX statements about vulnerability exploitability`)
Regional compliance (`FIPS?Federal Information Processing Standards - U.S. government cryptographic standards for secure systems`-aligned, `GOST?Russian national cryptographic standards (GOST R 34.10/34.11) required for government systems`)	No	Yes
License	Apache 2.0	BUSL-1.1

Real-World Impact

Typical Trivy Scan

Terminal

$ trivy image myapp:latest
myapp:latest (alpine 3.18)
Total: 487 vulnerabilities
  CRITICAL: 12
  HIGH: 89
  MEDIUM: 234
  LOW: 152

Now you spend days investigating which of those 487 actually matter.

Same Image with Stella Ops

Terminal

$ stella scan myapp:latest
✓ 487 CVEs found
✓ 475 NOT REACHABLE
! 12 REACHABLE

Fix these 12. Ignore the rest.

Focus on what matters. Ship with confidence.

Beyond Scanning: Deployment

Trivy is a scanner — it tells you what's vulnerable but doesn't help you deploy.

Stella Ops is a complete release control plane with built-in deployment execution:

Deployment Targets

→ Docker Compose deployments
→ Docker Swarm clusters
→ AWS ECS / Fargate
→ HashiCorp Nomad
→ Scripted deployments (.NET 10)

Infrastructure Integration

→ SSH/WinRM remote deployment
→ HashiCorp Vault for secrets
→ HashiCorp Consul for service registry
→ Environment?A logical deployment target (e.g. dev, staging, prod) that tracks its own release history, promotion rules, and policy gates promotions (Dev→Stage→Prod)
→ Approval workflows

Scan → Gate → Deploy → Export evidence — all in one platform.

Fit guidance by deployment and evidence needs

Trivy-only fit

⬢ You just need a quick vulnerability count
⬢ You have time to manually triage every CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability
⬢ Audit evidence isn't required
⬢ You prefer Apache 2.0 licensing

Stella fit

⬢ You need to know which CVEs actually matter
⬢ You're drowning in false positives
⬢ Auditors ask "why did you ignore this CVE?Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures - a unique identifier for a publicly known security vulnerability?"
⬢ You need deterministic, replayable scans
⬢ You require regional compliance (FIPS?Federal Information Processing Standards - U.S. government cryptographic standards for secure systems-aligned, GOST?Russian national cryptographic standards (GOST R 34.10/34.11) required for government systems)

Already using Trivy?

Stella Ops reads Trivy's SBOM output directly. Add reachability analysis to your existing workflow:

Terminal

$ trivy image --format cyclonedx myapp:latest | stella analyze -
Importing CycloneDX SBOM...
Running reachability analysis...
✓ 487 CVEs → 12 reachable

Methodology: This comparison is based on publicly available documentation, release notes, and hands-on evaluation as of February 2026. Capabilities change over time. Verify current behavior with each vendor's official documentation.

Stella Ops is committed to accurate, fair comparisons. If you believe any information is outdated or incorrect, please contact hello@stella-ops.org.

Evaluate scan-to-promotion fit

Run both tools on one digest and compare reachable-risk output, policy behavior, and evidence export.

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