HCL AppScan vs SonarQube comparison

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HCLTech Logo
5,423 views|4,191 comparisons
82% willing to recommend
Sonar Logo
53,062 views|42,374 comparisons
81% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary
Updated on Oct 27, 2022

We performed a comparison between HCL AppScan and Sonarqube based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.

  • Ease of Deployment: Most users of both solutions say their initial setup is straightforward.
  • Features: Users of both products are happy with their stability, scalability, and performance.

    Users of HCL AppScan like the solution’s UI and support of many languages. Reviewers mention that the solution has a high number of false positives and that its integration abilities could be improved.

    Sonarqube users like the solution’s ease of use, its good integration, and its ability to detect code quality during development. Users say more security scanning features and more dynamic testing would be helpful.
  • Pricing: HCL AppScan users share mixed reviews on pricing. Most SonarQube reviewers feel satisfied with the pricing, especially with its free Community Edition. SonarQube offers an open-source version as well as a reasonably priced product.
  • Service and Support: Users of both solutions express that support could be improved.

Comparison Results: Sonarqube offers better integration capabilities than HCL AppScan. Additionally, Sonarqube users are happier with the pricing. For these reasons, Sonarqube is the more desirable product in this comparison.

To learn more, read our detailed HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube Report (Updated: May 2024).
772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"We leverage it as a quality check against code.""This solution saves us time due to the low number of false positives detected.""The HCL AppScan turnaround time for Burp Suite or any new feature request is pretty good, and that is why we are sticking with the HCL.""It has certainly helped us find vulnerabilities in our software, so this is priceless in the end.""Usually when we deploy the application, there is a process for ethical hacking. The main benefit is that, the ethical hacking is almost clean, every time. So it's less cost, less effort, less time to production.""It highlights, with several grades of severity, the types of vulnerabilities, so we can focus on the most severe security vulnerabilities in the code.""The product is useful, particularly in its sensitivity and scanning capabilities.""IBM AppScan has made our work easy, as we can do four to five scans of websites at a time, which saves time when it comes to vulnerability."

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"It is working fine. It provides a good value for money.""SonarQube is one of the more popular solutions because it supports 29 languages.""Before you even compile, it can catch known vulnerability issues or patterns.""The most valuable features are that it is user-friendly, easy to access, and they provide good training files.""There are many options and examples available in the tool that help us fix the issues it shows us.""We can create a Quality Gate in order to fail Jenkins jobs where the code coverage is lower than the set percentage.""We advise all of our developers to have this solution in place.""This solution is simple to use and can be quickly deployed."

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Cons
"The pricing has room for improvement.""AppScan is too complicated and should be made more user-friendly.""The tool should improve its output. Scanning is not a challenge anymore since there are many such tools available in the market. The product needs to focus on how its output is being used by end users. It should be also more user-friendly. One of the major challenges is in the tool's integration with applications that need to be scanned. Sometimes, the scanning is not proper.""There are so many lines of code with so many different categories that I am likely to get lost. ​""The solution often has a high number of false positives. It's an aspect they really need to improve upon.""There is not a central management for static and dynamic.""A desktop version should be added.""There is room for improvement in the pricing model."

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"Code security could be better. They are already focusing on it, but I see a lot of improvement opportunities over there. I can see a lot of false positives in terms of security. They need to make the tests more accurate so that the false positives are not detected so frequently. It would also help if they provided us with an installer.""There is no automation. You need to put the code there and test. You then pull the results and put them back in the development environment. There is no integration with the development environment. We would like it to be integrated with our development environment, which is basically the CI/CD pipeline or the IDE that we have.""Code security scanning could be improved.""The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application. It's not like an introduction to C programming. You should know not just C programming and how to make projects but also how to apply its findings to the bigger picture. I've had users who said that they wish it was easier to understand how to configure, but I don't know if that's doable because what it's doing is a very complicated thing. I don't know if it is possible to make a complicated thing trivially simple.""It would be better if SonarQube provided a good UI for external configuration.""SonarQube is not development-centric like Snyk.""The exporting capabilities could be improved. Currently, exporting is fully dependent on the SonarQube environment.""This is a well-rounded solution, however, some features could be made available on the free version. The price of the solution could be reduced."

More SonarQube Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "AppScan is a little bit expensive. IBM needs to work a little bit on the pricing model, decreasing the license cost."
  • "With the features, that they offer, and the support, they offer, AppScan pricing is on a higher level."
  • "Pricing was the main reason that we went ahead with this solution as they were the lowest in the market."
  • "HCL AppScan is expensive."
  • "I would rate the product's pricing a nine out of ten. The product's pricing is expensive compared to the features that they offer."
  • "The price is very expensive."
  • "The solution is moderately priced."
  • "The price of HCL AppScan is okay, in my opinion. You just buy HCL AppScan and don't pay anything anymore, meaning it is just a one-time purchase."
  • More HCL AppScan Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "This is open source."
  • "We did not purchase a license (required for C++ support), but this option was considered."
  • "Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
  • "People can try the free licenses and later can seek buying plugins/support, etc. once they started liking it."
  • "This product is open source and very convenient."
  • "The licence is standard open source licensing"
  • "The price point on SonarQube is good."
  • "Some of the plugins that were previously free are not free now."
  • More SonarQube Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The most valuable feature of HCL AppScan is its integration with the SDLC, particularly during the coding phase.
    Top Answer:Improving usability could enhance the overall experience with AppScan. It would be beneficial to make the solution more user-friendly, ensuring that everyone can easily navigate and utilize its… more »
    Top Answer:I mainly use AppScan to secure various types of applications. I use its DAFDAT solution for black box scanning, as well as SaaS and source code validation. AppScan helps in scanning code for… more »
    Top Answer:I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer But if you are asking me about which tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have  a look… more »
    Top Answer:SonarQube is easy to deploy and configure, and also integrates well with other tools to do quality code analysis. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use… more »
    Top Answer:We researched Coverity, but in the end, we chose SonarQube. SonarQube is a tool for reviewing code quality and security. It helps to guide our development teams during code reviews by providing… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    5,423
    Comparisons
    4,191
    Reviews
    16
    Average Words per Review
    346
    Rating
    7.2
    Views
    53,062
    Comparisons
    42,374
    Reviews
    18
    Average Words per Review
    361
    Rating
    8.1
    Comparisons
    Checkmarx One logo
    Compared 21% of the time.
    SonarCloud logo
    Compared 13% of the time.
    Coverity logo
    Compared 11% of the time.
    Veracode logo
    Compared 10% of the time.
    Also Known As
    IBM Security AppScan, Rational AppScan, AppScan
    Sonar
    Learn More
    Interactive Demo
    HCLTech
    Demo Not Available
    Overview

    IBM Security AppScan enhances web application security and mobile application security, improves application security program management and strengthens regulatory compliance. By scanning your web and mobile applications prior to deployment, AppScan enables you to identify security vulnerabilities and generate reports and fix recommendations.

    SonarQube is a self-managed open-source platform that helps developers create code devoid of quality and vulnerability issues. By integrating seamlessly with the top DevOps platforms in the Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline, SonarQube continuously inspects projects across multiple programming languages, providing immediate status feedback while coding. SonarQube’s quality gates become part of your release pipeline, displaying pass/fail results for new code based on quality profiles you customize to your company standards. Following Sonar’s Clean as You Code methodology guarantees that only software of the highest quality makes it to production.

    At its core, SonarQube includes a static code analyzer that identifies bugs, security vulnerabilities, hidden secrets, and code smells. The platform guides you through issue resolution, fostering a culture of continuous improvement. SonarQube’s comprehensive reporting is a valuable tool for dev teams to monitor their codebase's overall health and quality across multiple projects in their portfolio. With SonarQube, you can achieve a state of Clean Code, leading to secure, reliable, and maintainable software.

    Sonar is the only solution combining the power of industry-leading software quality analysis with static application security testing (SAST) and real-time coding guidance in the IDE (with SonarLint) to meet the DevOps and DevSecOps demand of putting agility, automation, and security in the hands of developers. Further accelerate DevOps continuous integration by helping developers find and fix issues in code before the software testing stage, reducing the churn of finding, fixing, rebuilding, and retesting your app.

    With over 5,000 Clean Code rules, SonarQube analyzes 30+ of the most popular programming languages, including dozens of frameworks, the top DevOps platforms (GitLab, GitHub, Azure DevOps, and Bitbucket, and more), and the leading infrastructure as code (IaC) platforms.

    SonarQube is the most trusted static code analyzer used by over 7 million developers and 400,000 organizations globally to clean over half a trillion lines of code.

    Sample Customers
    Essex Technology Group Inc., Cisco, West Virginia University, APIS IT
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Government15%
    Transportation Company15%
    Comms Service Provider10%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company18%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Government10%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Financial Services Firm20%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm17%
    Computer Software Company15%
    Manufacturing Company12%
    Government6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise63%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise72%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business25%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    Buyer's Guide
    HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube
    May 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube and other solutions. Updated: May 2024.
    772,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    HCL AppScan is ranked 15th in Application Security Tools with 41 reviews while SonarQube is ranked 1st in Application Security Tools with 112 reviews. HCL AppScan is rated 7.8, while SonarQube is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of HCL AppScan writes " A stable and scalable product useful for application security scanning". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SonarQube writes "Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages". HCL AppScan is most compared with Veracode, Acunetix, PortSwigger Burp Suite Professional, OWASP Zap and Fortify on Demand, whereas SonarQube is most compared with Checkmarx One, SonarCloud, Coverity and Veracode. See our HCL AppScan vs. SonarQube report.

    See our list of best Application Security Tools vendors and best Static Application Security Testing (SAST) vendors.

    We monitor all Application Security Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.