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CAST Highlight vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Highlight
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (16th)
SonarQube Server (formerly ...
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
114
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (1st), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

CAST Highlight and SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. CAST Highlight is designed for Software Composition Analysis (SCA) and holds a mindshare of 0.9%, up 0.9% compared to last year.
SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube), on the other hand, focuses on Application Security Tools, holds 25.6% mindshare, down 27.1% since last year.
Software Composition Analysis (SCA)
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Jayanti Rode - PeerSpot reviewer
Identifies migration blockers and boosters while facing challenges with platform-specific roadblocks
The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization. Within that containerization, it offers generic blockers. However, my project might require it to provide Windows-specific blockers or Linux-specific blockers, as I often work with only one platform at a time. If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time. Understanding only the OS-specific blockers means I would avoid resolving irrelevant issues, thus saving time. Initially, I receive a response from support, however, if there is involvement from R&D or other teams, it may take longer than expected. The support team is challenging when sharing source code. As this is a static code analysis tool, it sometimes requires source code for R&D. However, CAST clients may be restricted from sharing due to business logic and nondisclosure agreements. This creates a challenge, and I may have to share pseudo code or seek client approval, risking escalation.
Wang Dayong - PeerSpot reviewer
Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages
The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"CAST Highlight is easy to use and has a good dashboard."
"The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization."
"The way it tells you which codebase is more ready for the cloud and which codebase is less ready is very valuable. It works seamlessly with most languages."
"It offers good performance."
"The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed."
"CAST Highlight provides a clear overview of the role portfolio and allows users to assess the overall quality of the environment. Users can see where improvements are needed and follow up on trends of the application."
"The most valuable features of the CAST Highlight are the interface and there are three notations that are very simple to understand and communicate with."
"In cloud migration, I use CAST highlight to identify blockers, which are the negative road patterns, and also the boosters, which are positive code patterns."
"The most valuable feature of SonarQube I have found to be the configuration that has allowed us to can make adjusts to the demands of the code review. It gives a specified classification regarding the skill, prioritization, and it is easy for me to review and make my code."
"The customizable dashboard and ability to include results and coverage from unit test and other static analysis code tools."
"We are using the Community edition. So, we don't have to incur any licensing costs. This is the best part."
"It is an easy tool that you can deploy and configure. After that you can measure the history of your obligation and integrate it with other tools like GitLab or GitHub or Azure DevOps to do quality code analysis."
"It helps our developers work more efficiently as we can identify things in a code prior to it being pushed to where it needs to go."
"Offers multi-programming language support"
"The most valuable features are the wide array of languages, multiple languages per project, the breakdown of bugs, and the description of vulnerabilities and code smells (best practices)."
"I like that it's easy to navigate not just in terms of code findings but you can actually see them in the context of your source code because it gives you a copy of your code with the items that it found and highlights them. You can see it directly in your code, so you can easily go back and make the corrections in the code. It basically finds the problems for you and tells you where they are."
 

Cons

"There's a bit of a learning curve at the outset."
"The reports that describe the issues of concern are rather abstract and the issues should be more clearly described to the user."
"Its price should be better. It is a pretty costly tool. They have two products: CAST Highlight and CAST AIP. I would expect CAST Highlight to have the Help dashboard and the Engineering dashboard. These dashboards are currently a part of CAST AIP, and if these are made available in CAST Highlight, customers won't have to use two different products all the time."
"If I received categorization in containerization blockers, it would save time."
"The ease of configuration and customization could be improved in CAST Highlight."
"CAST Highlight could improve to allow us to comment and do a deep analysis by ourselves."
"There could be potential improvements or additional features added to CAST Highlight to make it better."
"There needs to be a shareable reporting piece or something we can click and generate easily."
"Although it has Sonar built into it, it is still lacking. Customization features of identifying a particular attack still need to be worked on. To give you an example: if we want to scan and do a false positive analysis, those types of features are missing. If we want to rescan something from a particular point that is a feature that is also missing. It’s in our queue. That will hopefully save a lot of time."
"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."
"It requires advanced heuristics to recognize more complex constructs that could be disregarded as issues."
"We're in the process of figuring out how to automate the workflow for QA audit controls on it. I think that's perhaps an area that we could use some buffing. We're a Kubernetes shop, so there are some things that aren't direct fits, which we're struggling with on the component Docker side. But nothing major."
"We previously experienced issues with security but a segregated security violation has been implemented and the issues we experienced are being fixed."
"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."
"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution. However, CAST Highlight is less expensive than the CAST AIP, but it remains too expensive and the professional services from CAST are also too expensive. The high price is part of the problem with the CAST solutions."
"Basic support is included with the standard licensing feed but it can be upgraded for an additional cost."
"It is a pretty costly tool. A lot of customers are resistant to using it."
"CAST Highlight is an expensive solution."
"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."
"It's an open-source product."
"We are using the open-source community version, but there are enterprise licenses available."
"We are using the free, unlicensed version."
"SonarQube is a fairly affordable solution for a larger scale if you have a specific role or specific department for secure code."
"The product’s price is lower than Veracode’s price."
"My guess is that we have a yearly subscription. We use it quite extensively, so a monthly license wouldn't make sense. Yearly subscriptions are usually cheaper. In addition to the standard licensing fee, there is just the cost of running the hardware where it is hosted."
"We are using the community version of the solution and we plan on purchasing licenses for the upgraded version soon. There is a limitation on how many lines of code can be scanned and this is why we are going to purchase a license for an increased amount."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Computer Software Company
16%
Insurance Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about CAST Highlight?
The most valuable features of CAST Highlight are automation and speed.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for CAST Highlight?
The pricing of CAST Highlight was not considered expensive or cheap, and no specific comment was made about the setup cost.
What needs improvement with CAST Highlight?
The solution provides agnostic blockers for platforms as well as for containerization. Within that containerization, it offers generic blockers. However, my project might require it to provide Wind...
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

No data available
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Wells Fargo, Bank of NY Mellon, Northern Trust, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, BMW, AT&T, US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, John Hancock, Marsh & McLennan, Ernst & Young, PwC, Volkswagen, Boston Consulting Group, London Stock Exchange, Telefonica, Saur France, Total Energies France, SNCF
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about CAST Highlight vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) and other solutions. Updated: September 2022.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.