Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

Checkmarx One vs Fortify on Demand 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:
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Checkmarx One is 10.7%, down from 15.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.5%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 25.1%, down from 26.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Rohit Kesharwani - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good security analysis and security identification within the source code
We integrate Checkmarx into our software development cycle using GitLab's CI/CD pipeline. Checkmark has been the most helpful for us in the development stage. The solution's incremental scanning feature has impacted our development speed. The solution's vulnerability detection is around 80% to 90% accurate. I would recommend Checkmarx to other users because it is one of the good tools for doing security analysis and security identification within the source code. Overall, I rate Checkmarx a nine out of ten.
Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.
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

"What I like best about Checkmarx is that it has fewer false positives than other products, giving you better results."
"The only thing I like is that Checkmarx does not need to compile."
"The setup is very easy. There is a lot of information in the documents which makes the install not difficult at all."
"Checkmarx offers many valuable features, including Static Application Security Testing (SAST), Software Composition Analysis (SCA), Infrastructure as Code (IAC), Supply Chain Security, and API Security."
"Less false positive errors as compared to any other solution."
"It allows for SAST scanning of uncompiled code. Further, it natively integrates with all key repos formats (Git, TFS, SVN, Perforce, etc)."
"We use the solution for dynamic application testing."
"The solution communicates where to fix the issue for the purpose of less iterations."
"Speed and efficiency are great features."
"The features that I have found most valuable include its security scan, the vulnerability finds, and the web interface to search and review the issues."
"The static code analyzers are the most valuable features of this solution."
"The solution scans our code and provides us with a dashboard of all the vulnerabilities and the criticality of the vulnerabilities. It is very useful that they provide right then and there all the information about the vulnerability, including possible fixes, as well as some additional documentation and links to the authoritative sources of why this is an issue and what's the correct way to deal with it."
"I don’t know of any other On-Demand enterprise solution like this one where we can load the details and within a few days, receive the results of intrusion attacks, and work with HP Security Experts when needed for clarification"
"We identified a lot of security vulnerability much earlier in the development and could fix this well before the product was rolled out to a huge number of clients."
"Once we have our project created with our application pipeline connected to the test scanning, it only takes two minutes. The report explaining what needs to be modified related to security and vulnerabilities in our code is very helpful. We are able to do static and dynamic code scanning."
"One of the valuable features is the ability to submit your code and have it run in the background. Then, if something comes up that is more specific, you have the security analyst who can jump in and help, if needed."
"The stability is good."
"The solution has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages."
"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 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."
"This solution is simple to use and can be quickly deployed."
"It's enabled us to improve software quality and help us to disseminate best practices."
"It is very good at identifying technical debt."
"SonarQube: Recording of issues over a period of time, with an indication of the addition in the new issues or the reduction of existing issues (which were fixed)."
 

Cons

"Some of the descriptions were found to be missing or were not as elaborate as compared to other descriptions. Although, they could be found across various standard sources but it would save a lot of time for developers, if this was fixed."
"You can't use it in the continuous delivery pipeline because the scanning takes too much time."
"Checkmarx could improve the solution reports and false positives. The false positives could be reduced. For example, we have alerts that are tagged as vulnerabilities but when you drill down they are not."
"Checkmarx could improve the speed of the scans."
"Implementing a blackout time for any user or teams: Needs improvement."
"When we first ran it on a big project, there wasn't enough memory on the computer. It originally ran with eight gigabytes, and now it runs with 32. The software stopped at some point, and while I don't think it said it ran out of memory, it just said "stopped" and something else. We had to go to the logs and send them to the integrator, and eventually, they found a memory issue in the logs and recommended increasing the memory. We doubled it once, and it didn't seem enough. We doubled it again, and it helped."
"Checkmarx could improve by reducing the price."
"It would be really helpful if the level of confidence was included, with respect to identified issues."
"There were some regulated compliances, which were not there."
"We want a user-based control and role-based access for developers. We want to give limited access to developers so that it only pertains to the code that they write and scanning of the codes for any vulnerabilities as they're progressing with writing the code. As of now, the interface to give restricted access to the developers is not the best. It gives them more access than what is basically required, but we don't want over-provisioning and over-access."
"The products must provide better integration with build tools."
"The biggest deficiency is the integration with bug tracker systems. It might be better if the configuration screen presented for accessing the bug tracking systems could provide some flexibility."
"It natively supports only a few languages. They can include support for more native languages. The response time from the support team can also be improved. They can maybe include video tutorials explaining the remediation process. The remediation process is sometimes not that clear. It would be helpful to have videos. Sometimes, the solution that the tool gives in the GUI is not straightforward to understand for the developer. At present, for any such issues, you have to create a ticket for the support team and request help from the support team."
"They have a release coming out, which is full of new features. Based on their roadmap, there's nothing that I would suggest for them to put in it that they haven't already suggested. However, I am a customer, so I always think the pricing is something that could be improved. I am working with them on that, and they're very flexible. They work with their customers and kind of tailor the product to the customer's needs. So far, I am very happy with what they're able to provide. Their subscriptions could use a little bit of a reworking, but that would be about it."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand can improve by having more graphs. For example, to show the improvement of the level of security."
"There are lots of limitations with code technology. It cannot scan .net properly either."
"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."
"The product needs to integrate other security tools for security scanning."
"Our developers have complained about the Quality Gates and the number of false positives that this product reports."
"Having performance regression would be a helpful add on or ability to be able to do during the scan."
"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."
"It should be user-friendly."
"We could use some team support, but since we are using the community version, it's not available."
"The solution could improve the management reports by making them easier to understand for the technical team that needs to review them."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"I would rate the solution’s pricing an eight out of ten. The tool’s pricing is higher than others and it is for the license alone."
"It is a good product but a little overpriced."
"Before implementing the product I would evaluate if it is really necessary to scan so many different languages and frameworks. If not, I think there must be a cheaper solution for scanning Java-only applications (which are 90% of our applications)."
"We're using a commercial version of Checkmarx, and we paid for the solution for one year. The price is high and could be reduced."
"The number of users and coverage for languages will have an impact on the cost of the license."
"I believe pricing is better compared to other commercial tools."
"We have a subscription license that is on a yearly basis, and it's a pretty competitive solution."
"Fortify on Demand is more expensive than Burpsuite. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"It is cost-effective."
"It's a yearly contract, but I don't remember the dollar amount."
"It is not more expensive than other solutions, but the pricing is competitive."
"The product's cost depends on the type of license."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
"There are different costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand depending on the assessments you want to use. There is only a standard license needed to use the solution."
"The pricing model it's based on how many applications you wish to scan."
"The developer edition is based on cost per lines of code."
"This product is open source and very convenient."
"Get the paid version which allows the customized dashboard and provides technical support."
"The solution is cheaper than other products."
"I requested this license for one million lines of code and they accepted this."
"We pay €10 per month for this solution, which is good. It provides a good value for money."
"The tool's pricing is reasonable."
"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."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Application Security Tools solutions are best for your needs.
849,335 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
21%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
5%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
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 alternatives are there for Fortify WebInspect and Fortify SCA?
I would like to recommend Checkmarx. With Checkmarx, you are able to have an all in one solution for SAST and SCA as ...
What do you like most about Checkmarx?
Compared to the solutions we used previously, Checkmarx has reduced our workload by almost 75%.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Checkmarx?
The pricing is relatively expensive due to the product's quality and performance, but it is worth it.
What do you like most about Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
It helps deploy and track changes easily as per time-to-time market upgrades.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
In comparison with other tools, they're competitive. It is not more expensive than other solutions, but their pricing...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the ...
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 ...
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. Son...
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 securi...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
Sonar
 

Interactive Demo

Demo not available
Demo not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

YIT, Salesforce, Coca-Cola, SAP, U.S. Army, Liveperson, Playtech Case Study: Liveperson Implements Innovative Secure SDLC
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Sonar, Veracode, Checkmarx and others in Application Security Tools. Updated: April 2025.
849,335 professionals have used our research since 2012.