Codacy Guardrails

What it does

Codacy Guardrails is an IDE extension and local toolchain that scans code, including AI-generated code, against your security and quality policies while it is being written. It covers secret scanning, insecure dependencies, SAST, SQL injections, AI policy violations and unapproved model calls, and lets an AI coding agent auto-fix the issues it finds.

Developers install the extension from the VS Code, IntelliJ, Cursor or Windsurf marketplace, sign in through GitHub, Bitbucket or GitLab, activate the Codacy CLI for local analysis and install the MCP server. From the AI chat panel they can also query and fix existing problems across a codebase.

Guardrails is not a language model; it communicates with AI coding agents the user already owns through an MCP server. It is supported on macOS, Linux and Windows via WSL and covers 38 programming languages. Enforcing shared coding standards across an organization requires a Team or Business subscription.

What it can do

• Scans AI-generated and human-written code locally in the IDE for security and quality issues.
• Detects secrets, insecure dependencies, SAST issues, SQL injections, and AI policy violations.
• Lets AI agents auto-fix issues identified by Codacy scans.
• Queries and fixes existing problems across a codebase from the AI chat panel.
• Sets and shares AI coding standards across agents and IDEs for a team.
• Generates code health reports across teams and projects.

Works with

• Visual Studio Code
• IntelliJ IDEA
• Cursor
• Windsurf
• GitHub
• Bitbucket
• GitLab
• Jira
• Slack

Before you choose

• Using Guardrails with an AI agent requires an MCP-compatible coding agent; without one, only the IDE extension without the MCP server applies.
• Configuring and enforcing coding standards at scale across all IDEs in an organization requires a Codacy Team or Business subscription.
• Cloud features such as PR merge gates, team dashboards and DAST pipelines belong to the broader Codacy Cloud platform and its paid plans.

Listed under

• Coding

Get started

Install from the IDE marketplace, then sign in with GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab.

1. Install the Codacy extension from the VS Code, IntelliJ, Cursor, or Windsurf marketplace.
2. Open the Codacy tab and log in or create an account via GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab.
3. Activate the Codacy CLI for local analysis and install the MCP server, or install them manually for other IDEs.

Local IDE scanning is free. Team and Business plans add central policy enforcement and full Codacy Cloud features; Business is quote-based, and Team amounts should be verified on the Codacy pricing page. A 14-day free trial of the Codacy platform is offered.

14-day free trial.

Source: codacy.com/pricing, checked 29 Oct 2026. Prices can change; check before you buy.

Sources for this overview

Product pages, documentation, and pricing checked 29 Oct 2026. Each source supports part of the overview; availability and prices can change.

• AI Guardrails for Code Quality & Security | Codacy ↗www.codacy.com
• Codacy Pricing, Plans & Features ↗www.codacy.com
• Codacy | Code Quality & Security for AI-Assisted Engineering ↗www.codacy.com
• AI Code Reviewer for Pull Requests | Codacy ↗www.codacy.com
• AI Code Security & Governance for Eng Teams | Codacy ↗www.codacy.com
• Documentation home - Codacy docs ↗docs.codacy.com

Company website

codacy.com: product, pricing and policy pages

Social accounts

Accounts the company links, and its posts on X

Human review

Checked by a person

knowledge_base

manual_review

Last checked 29 Oct 2026. Every field keeps its source and date; unknown means we couldn’t confirm it.