depmedic / compare / ci-doctor vs MegaLinter

ci-doctor vs MegaLinter

MegaLinter is a configurable fork of super-linter with finer-grained linter selection and reporting. ci-doctor is focused on auditing .github/workflows/*.yml for cost and reliability. Different scopes.

tl;dr   Use MegaLinter for application-code linting at scale. Use ci-doctor for workflow-level cost and reliability. They are not competitors.

Where MegaLinter wins

  • 70+ language linters out of the box; finer-grained linter selection than super-linter.
  • Polished reporting: HTML reports, comment summaries, file-level annotations.
  • Profiles for common stacks (Python, JS, DevOps, Documentation, Security).
  • Active maintainer (oxsecurity) with regular releases.

Where ci-doctor wins

  • Workflow-aware: knows that actions/cache with a static key is bad, that fail-fast: true wastes minutes, that macos-latest costs 10x. MegaLinter does not have rules for these.
  • Tiny scope, tiny binary: ~6 ms per repo. MegaLinter takes minutes to run.
  • No container required; runs as npx ci-doctor from any developer machine.
  • Companion gha-budget CLI prices the workflow in dollars.
  • Auto-fix mode for safe rules.

Where they overlap

MegaLinter can include actionlint via the github_actions linter group, which gives you syntactic checks on workflows. ci-doctor goes a layer up: cost, reliability, and security smells that are valid YAML.

Run them side by side

This is the answer for most teams. Both finish in seconds:

# application code
uses: oxsecurity/megalinter@v8
# workflow audit
uses: depmedicdev-byte/ci-doctor@v1

Try ci-doctor in 6 ms

Zero install, zero config:

# 14-rule audit of every workflow under .github/workflows/
npx ci-doctor

# auto-apply the four safe fixes
npx ci-doctor --fix

# SARIF for GitHub Code Scanning
npx ci-doctor --sarif > results.sarif
View on npm   All 14 rules explained

Want the long-form patterns?

The Cut Your CI Bill cookbook is 30 paste-ready GitHub Actions patterns plus 5 hardened workflow templates - the why behind every default ci-doctor enforces. $19, one-time, MIT-licensed templates.

Get the cookbook   5 free preview patterns

About this comparison

Written 2026-04-27 by the maintainer of ci-doctor. MegaLinter on GitHub for upstream documentation. If anything here is incorrect or outdated, open an issue at depmedicdev-byte/ci-doctor/issues and I will fix it. We do not pay for placement and we do not accept paid placement.

Other comparisons: vs actionlint · vs super-linter · vs octoscan