Should You Build Your Own EU AI Act Compliance Scanner?
The honest build vs. buy analysis — engineering hours, maintenance burden, and true annual cost.
The Argument: "I'll Just Build My Own Scanner"
Static analysis tools are open-source, fast, and already installed in most CI pipelines. It feels like a natural fit: write some patterns, run on PR, done. This logic breaks down when you account for the EU AI Act's scope. The regulation spans 113 articles, references multiple Annexes, applies differently to providers vs deployers, and changes as the Commission publishes delegated acts and guidance.
Writing a rule for "does this model have a risk management system" is not one regex — it is a family of patterns across Python, TypeScript, Java, Go, and whatever language your ML pipelines run in, with false-positive tuning for each, maintained as codebases evolve.
Reality Check: The Engineering Cost
At €200/h fully-loaded engineering cost: 452h × €200 = €90,400 first-year. Ongoing maintenance (keeping rules current with Commission guidance, new language support, FP tuning) adds roughly €40,000+/yr thereafter.
Self-Hosted vs Scanara Business
| Feature | Self-hosted scanner | Scanara Business |
|---|---|---|
| Rule maintenance | Your team | Included |
| 113-article coverage | Build yourself | Shipped |
| Multi-language support | Build yourself | 10+ languages |
| Annex IV generation | Manual | Automated |
| FRIA / AIRA workflows | None | Built-in |
| GitHub integration | CI script only | Checks API + merge gate |
| False-positive dedup | Manual tuning | Automatic |
| Support SLA | Community | 24h (Business) |
| Annual cost | €40K–€90K | €9,588 |
Start free — compare the self-hosted cost yourself
Free tier: 2 repos, 5 scans, 3 assessments, and 2 Annex IV dossiers (lifetime). No credit card required.
How Scanara Helps
Scanara automates EU AI Act compliance from code to dossier. Connect your GitHub repos and get compliance reports in minutes.