FOSSA API
FOSSA's REST API provides programmatic access to open-source license compliance results, dependency vulnerability findings, SBOM generation, and policy enforcement data for software projects.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
TLS enforced on all endpoints. API tokens lack scope granularity — a single token grants full account access. SOC2 Type II certified. Data residency options available for enterprise plans. fossa-cli is open source (FOSSA-licensed), enabling dependency hygiene auditing.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
An agent needs to enforce open-source license compliance and generate dependency metadata (SBOM) as part of a software release or procurement workflow.
Avoid When
Your project has no open-source dependencies or you only need CVE vulnerability scanning without license compliance.
Use Cases
- • Checking whether a project passes FOSSA license compliance policies before cutting a release
- • Retrieving a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for a project to satisfy enterprise or regulatory requirements
- • Listing dependency vulnerabilities found by FOSSA across a portfolio of repositories
- • Triggering FOSSA analysis for a project via API and polling for completion to integrate into CI/CD agents
- • Querying license attribution reports for open-source notice file generation
Not For
- • Static application security testing (SAST) or code vulnerability scanning — use Snyk, SonarCloud, or Semgrep for that
- • Runtime dependency monitoring or live traffic-based security analysis
- • Projects with entirely proprietary dependencies and no open-source components (no value added)
Interface
Authentication
API tokens created in FOSSA account settings. Passed via Authorization header as token {API_KEY}. Separate tokens for push (fossa-cli analysis uploads) and pull (reading results via REST API). No scope granularity on REST API tokens — full account access.
Pricing
FOSSA is primarily an enterprise product. Pricing is not publicly listed — sales process required for business plans. Free tier is functional but limited. API access may be gated to paid plans.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ Analysis must be pushed via fossa-cli first — the REST API reads results, it does not initiate scanning
- ⚠ Project identifiers in FOSSA use a custom format (type+{name}$revision) that is non-obvious and error-prone
- ⚠ Webhook events for analysis completion are the most reliable integration pattern — polling adds latency
- ⚠ SBOM export endpoints may be behind enterprise plan gates — verify plan before building automation
- ⚠ API documentation is partially hidden behind login, requiring a FOSSA account even to read the full reference
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.