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CAST Application Intelligence Platform vs SonarQube comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CAST Application Intelligen...
Ranking in Software Development Analytics
3rd
Average Rating
7.0
Reviews Sentiment
8.0
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
SonarQube
Ranking in Software Development Analytics
1st
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
134
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Software Development Analytics category, the mindshare of CAST Application Intelligence Platform is 6.7%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube is 41.5%, down from 46.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Software Development Analytics Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
SonarQube41.5%
CAST Application Intelligence Platform6.7%
Other51.8%
Software Development Analytics
 

Q&A Highlights

JB
Senior Program Manager at Oasis TE
May 23, 2023
 

Featured Reviews

VG
Chief Architect at Peristent Systems
Has a security dashboard that's helpful because it gives compliance checks based on some of the leading frameworks in the industry
The overall coverage of rules could be improved in the CAST Application Intelligence Platform because it does not cater to or cover all. For example, 2022 CWE coverage is still not available in the CAST Application Intelligence Platform. The solution also covers some NIST rules, but it does not cater to all rules. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next update of the CAST Application Intelligence Platform is for it to provide source code developer and contributor details, especially information on which areas of code were touched. This would be a good insight as the CAST Application Intelligence Platform looks into the source code.
KH
Sr Software Engineering Supervisor at Mozarc Medical
Gains control over rule customization and achieves reliable vulnerability assessment
The deployment process took me about 2 or 3 hours to deploy SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube), although I do not remember exactly since it was done about 2 years back. Currently, about 10 of my developers are using SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) in my company. I do not have plans to increase the usage of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) in the future as there will not be any requirement to increase. I am a senior software engineer and supervisor at Mozark Medical. My corporate email address is karthik.k.a.r.t.h.i.k.h.a.r.p.a.n.h.a.l.l.i@mozarkmedical.com. Overall, I would rate SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) as a 9 out of 10.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"CAST's risk and security flow detection capabilities are highly effective, particularly in identifying security vulnerabilities. It is one of the most important and valuable features of the platform."
"The most valuable feature of the CAST Application Intelligence Platform is its security dashboard which is a dedicated dashboard that's pretty helpful because it gives compliance checks based on some of the leading frameworks in the industry, such as ISO 5055, OWASP, CWE Top 25, and NIST security guidelines. I find the security dashboard of the solution and the information it provides pretty useful. The security dashboard of the CAST Application Intelligence Platform is a feature that stands out."
"Our clients use CAST Highlight for cloud migration. This allows them to remove or remediate the blockers which are highlighted. This part of the solution shows improvement in quality and captures feedback for our clients."
"It supports most programming languages."
"Used for controlling the technical debt and code quality."
"If code coverage is a low number then that's of great value to me."
"The most valuable features of SonarCloud are the ability to discover vulnerabilities, security weak points, security hotspots, and all the feedback that comes into the feature branch. You can deploy the code with the security, you can eliminate the problem at the developer level rather than identifying the problem in the productions."
"I am only interested in the security features in SonarQube. There are plenty of features other features, such as test coverage, code anomalies, and pointer access are handled by the business logic teams. They get the reports and they have to fix them in JIRA or Bugzilla."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is that it is free."
"Code Convention: Using the tool to implement some sort of coding convention is really useful and ensures that the code is consistent no matter how many contributors."
"The most valuable function is its usability."
"I find SonarQube Cloud to be very user-friendly with an easy-to-use interface."
"SonarQube is scalable. My company has 50 users."
 

Cons

"Areas for improvement in CAST AIP include enhancing support for implementation in complex environments and improving technical support to address organizational challenges alongside engineering issues."
"Implementation could be made more simpler as it is complex."
"The integration of this solution could be improved."
"It has very few plugins to access different code repositories, so source code has to be fed."
"The overall coverage of rules could be improved in the CAST Application Intelligence Platform because it does not cater to or cover all. For example, 2022 CWE coverage is still not available in the CAST Application Intelligence Platform. The solution also covers some NIST rules, but it does not cater to all rules. An additional feature I'd like to see in the next update of the CAST Application Intelligence Platform is for it to provide source code developer and contributor details, especially information on which areas of code were touched. This would be a good insight as the CAST Application Intelligence Platform looks into the source code."
"If the product could assist us with fixing issues by giving us more pointers then it would help to resolve more of the warnings without such a commitment in terms of time."
"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."
"New plug-ins should be integrated into SonarCloud to give more flexibility to the product."
"I need a solution that can bring together three key areas: vulnerabilities, static scanning, and misarchitecture. Currently, to achieve our expectations, we have to use more than one product, as some products excel at scanning for vulnerabilities but are poor at checking code quality."
"The scanning part could be improved in SonarQube. We have used Coverity for scanning, and we have the critical issues reported by Coverity. When we used SonarQube for scanning and looked at the results, it seems that some of them have incorrect input. This part can be improved for C and C++ languages."
"I don't believe you can have metrics of code quality based upon code analysis. I don't think it's possible for a computer to do it."
"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."
"After scanning our code and generating a report, it would be helpful if SonarQube could also generate a solution to fix vulnerabilities in the report."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I do know how the CAST Application Intelligence Platform is licensed, but I'm not able to give the cost because the price is not listed. My company works with individual vendors, so pricing is on a case-to-case basis, but the vendors give specialized pricing because of the enterprise deployment, though my team is aware of product pricing based on lines of code, based on the number of applications, etc., I'm unable to give the exact licensing costs of the CAST Application Intelligence Platform. My company doesn't have to pay extra for some features or services because all are included as part of the enterprise license. On a scale of one to five, with five being very cheap and one being very expensive, I would rate the CAST Application Intelligence Platform as three out of five."
"We use the free version; there are no hidden costs or licensing required."
"The price of this solution is more expensive than competitors. However, it works better than competitors."
"I rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"It's an open-source solution, with no additional costs."
"We are using the Community edition of SonarQube."
"We're using an older version because it is the open-source flavor of it and we can continue using it at no cost. We're not paying any licensing at all, which was another factor in choosing this route so that we can learn and grow with it and not be committed to licenses and other similar things. If we choose to get something else, we have to relearn, but we don't have to relicense. Basically, we're paying no license costs."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"I was using the Community Edition, which is available free of charge."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Government
9%
Retailer
5%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Government
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business41
Midsize Enterprise24
Large Enterprise79
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CAST Application Intelligence Platform?
CAST's risk and security flow detection capabilities are highly effective, particularly in identifying security vulnerabilities. It is one of the most important and valuable features of the platfor...
What needs improvement with CAST Application Intelligence Platform?
Areas for improvement in CAST AIP include enhancing support for implementation in complex environments and improving technical support to address organizational challenges alongside engineering iss...
What is your primary use case for CAST Application Intelligence Platform?
CAST AIP is a valuable solution for quality metrics and application security. It is beneficial for software architecture detection.
Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?
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...
Which gives you more for your money - SonarQube or Veracode?
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...
How would you decide between Coverity and Sonarqube?
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 rem...
 

Also Known As

CAST AIP
Sonar, SonarQube Cloud
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Steria, T-Systems MMS, Atos Origin, Accenture, Capgemini
Snowflake, Booking.com, Deutsche Bank, AstraZeneca, and Ford Motor Company.
Find out what your peers are saying about CAST Application Intelligence Platform vs. SonarQube and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,515 professionals have used our research since 2012.