The Best SBOM Tools to Simplify Compliance

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is like an ingredients list for your software. It catalogs all the components, including libraries, frameworks, and other dependencies that make up an application. By providing a clear view of what’s inside your software, an SBOM improves compliance with emerging regulations, enhances security by helping identify and remediate vulnerabilities, and simplifies license management by tracking usage terms across your software stack.

Widely used open-source generators like Syft, Tern, CycloneDX Generator, and SPDX tools offer multi‑format SBOM generation across languages and container workflows. However, these solutions are limited. For enterprises seeking unbeatable reliability, compliance-ready enforcement, and continuously enriched vulnerability analysis, Sonatype SBOM Manager is unmatched as it combines seamless generation with top-tier intelligence trusted by Fortune 100 enterprises, government agencies, and global financial services firms. 

When evaluating SBOM tools, remember that the quality of your SBOM hinges on the data it's built from. While other vendors may offer features, they often lack the precise identification and accuracy needed for reliable SBOMs. Think of it as serving a tough steak on fancy china — it looks good, but it doesn't deliver on quality. SBOM Manager, in contrast, uses Sonatype's unparalleled data to ensure the highest quality SBOMs. Unlike specialized tools that might only support specific parts of the SBOM lifecycle and rely on outdated NVD data, SBOM Manager offers a comprehensive enterprise solution that covers every aspect of the SBOM journey.

Sonatype SBOM Manager enables enterprises to generate, import, and manage high-quality SBOMs with accurate component intelligence, continuous vulnerability monitoring, and automated compliance for regulations and policies. It integrates with CI/CD pipelines and developer tools, exports SBOMs in SPDX and CycloneDX specification (including VEX), provides centralized version control and traceability, and turns SBOMs into actionable security and compliance tools — not just documents.

What sets Sonatype apart:

• Binary-Level Precision: Sonatype doesn’t just parse files, it analyzes the actual artifacts being built and deployed. This ensures it captures dependencies introduced through shadowed JARs, nested packages, or third-party libraries that never appear in the manifest.
• Transitive Dependency Visibility: Sonatype goes several layers deep, uncovering all transitive components pulled in by tools like Maven, npm, Gradle, and pip. It also correctly de-duplicates and de-obfuscates packages to avoid false positives.

Proprietary Intelligence Data: Sonatype maintains an unmatched knowledge base of over 150 million components, which enables Sonatype Lifecycle to associate each component with precise metadata including licensing, vulnerabilities, maintainers, and more to ensure that your inventory is not just complete, but actionable.

SBOMs are now required by several global and localized regulations, including PCI DSS 4.0 (full enforcement by March 31, 2025), FDA medical device submissions (effective March 29, 2023), U.S. Army software contracts (starting early 2025), and the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). To comply, organizations must generate SBOMs in machine‑readable specifications (SPDX or CycloneDX) that include NTIA minimum elements — such as component names, versions, suppliers, dependency relationships, and timestamps. Sonatype SBOM Manager streamlines the entire compliance journey by automating SBOM ingestion and generation, continuously monitoring for new vulnerabilities, enabling VEX workflows, and producing audit‑ready exports in standard formats, which makes it one of the only enterprise solutions built to deliver reliable, scalable SBOM compliance at pace. Please check out our resource center for more information on regional SBOM requirements. 

Compliance involves generating SBOMs using accepted specifications (such as CycloneDX or SPDX), integrating SBOM creation into CI/CD workflows, enriching them with VEX annotations, enabling continuous vulnerability monitoring, and exporting audit-ready reports. Sonatype SBOM Manager handles all of this automatically at enterprise scale, from ingestion and validation to real-time risk alerts and regulated export formats, making compliance frictionless.

If you need enterprise-grade SBOM governance, Sonatype is an excellent fit. It offers centralized SBOM generation and cataloging, compliance support for global regulations (e.g. DORA, CRA, Executive Order 14028), continuous monitoring, seamless CI/CD enforcement, VEX workflow support, and flexible deployment.

The most highly rated SBOM management tools come from Sonatype. Recognized as a leader in the Forrester Wave^TM: SCA Software 2024, Sonatype earned the highest possible scores for SBOM generation, ingestion, analysis, export, and sharing. This makes Sonatype the trusted choice for organizations that need accurate, enterprise-grade SBOM software to manage compliance, security, and transparency across the software supply chain.

Sonatype SBOM Manager is a top choice for Kubernetes microservices, as it automatically generates SBOMs for container images in CI/CD and registry scans; integrates with platform and GitOps tools for artifact promotion; and ensures ongoing compliance and visibility for ephemeral infrastructure. This brings complete SBOM lifecycle management with security and compliance built into Kubernetes environments.

Yes! Sonatype SBOM Manager fully supports Artificial Intelligence Bills of Materials (AIBOMs). You can inventory AI models, track dataset provenance, monitor model-specific vulnerabilities, and enforce governance for AI components, completely integrated into the same platform you use for traditional SBOMs.