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CodeSonar vs Contrast Security Assess comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 8, 2024

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

CodeSonar
Ranking in Application Security Tools
30th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Static Code Analysis (10th)
Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (27th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of CodeSonar is 1.5%, up from 1.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 0.8%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Contrast Security Assess0.8%
CodeSonar1.5%
Other97.7%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mathieu ALBRESPY - PeerSpot reviewer
Nice interface, quick to deploy, and easy to expand
This is the first time I've used this kind of software. It was the only one we could apply to analyze with MISRA rules. At my new company, I tried to use Klocwork. I tried to use it, just once so I cannot compare it exactly with CodeSonar. I also have a plugin for my Visual Studio and I try to make it work. It's not easy, however, I don't think that we have this kind of functionality with CodeSonar. It can do some incremental analysis. However, since this feature is also available on CodeSonar, it would be a good idea to have a plugin on Visual Studio just to have a quick analysis.
Mustufa Bhavnagarwala - PeerSpot reviewer
A stable solution that provides lots of details on web-based vulnerabilities and source code reviews
Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to the report that Contrast Security Assess gives. Further analysis should be done of the third-party libraries report that it gives. The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities. The onboarding or the setup of Contrast Security Assess can get a little easier.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The most valuable features of CodeSonar were all the categorized classes provided, and reports of future bugs which might occur in the production code. Additionally, I found the buffer overflow and underflow useful."
"What I like best about CodeSonar is that it has fantastic speed, analysis and configuration times. Its detection of all runtime errors is also very good, though there were times it missed a few. The configuration of logs by CodeSonar is also very fantastic which I've not seen anywhere else. I also like the GUI interface of CodeSonar because it's very user friendly and the tool also shows very precise logs and results."
"CodeSonar’s most valuable feature is finding security threats."
"There is nice functionality for code surfing and browsing."
"The tool is very good for detecting memory leaks."
"The most valuable feature of CodeSonar is the catching of dead code. It is helpful."
"It has been able to scale."
"We use the Contrast OSS feature that allows us to look at third-party, open-source software libraries, because it has a cool interface where you can look at all the different libraries. It has some really cool additional features where it gives us how many instances in which something has been used... It tells us it has been used 10 times out of 20 workloads, for example. Then we know for sure that OSS is being used."
"No other tool does the runtime scanning like Contrast does. Other static analysis tools do static scanning, but Contrast is runtime analysis, when the routes are exercised. That's when the scan happens. This is a tool that has a very unique capability compared to other tools. That's what I like most about Contrast, that it's runtime."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"The solution is very accurate in identifying vulnerabilities. In cases where we are performing application assessment using Contrast Assess, and also using legacy application security testing tools, Contrast successfully identifies the same vulnerabilities that the other tools have identified but it also identifies significantly more. In addition, it has visibility into application components that other testing methodologies are unaware of."
"This has changed the way that developers are looking at usage of third-party libraries, upfront. It's changing our model of development and our culture of development to ensure that there is more thought being put into the usage of third-party libraries."
"The accuracy of the solution in identifying vulnerabilities is better than any other product we've used, far and away. In our internal comparisons among different tools, Contrast consistently finds more impactful vulnerabilities, and also identifies vulnerabilities that are nearly guaranteed to be there, meaning that the chance of false positives is very low."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"CodeSonar could improve by having better coding rules so we did not have to use another solution, such as MISRA C."
"It was expensive."
"In terms of areas for improvement, the use case for CodeSonar was good, but compared to other tools, it seems CodeSonar isn't a sound static analysis tool, and this is a major con I've seen from it. Right now, in the market, people prefer sound static analysis tools, so I would have preferred if CodeSonar was developed into a sound static analysis tool formally, in terms of its algorithms, so then you can see it extensively used in the market because at the moment, here in India, only fifty to sixty customers use CodeSonar. If the product is developed into a sound static analysis tool, it could compete with Polyspace, and from its current fifty customers, that number could go up to a hundred."
"It would be beneficial for the solution to include code standards and additional functionality for security."
"There could be a shared licensing model for the users."
"In a future release, the solution should upgrade itself to the current trends and differentiate between the languages. If there are any classifications that can be set for these programming languages that would be helpful rather than having everything in the generic category."
"The scanning tool for core architecture could be improved."
"The product's retesting part needs improvement. The tool also needs improvement in the suggestions provided for fixing vulnerabilities. It relies more on documentation rather than on quick fixes."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"To instrument an agent, it has to be running on a type of application technology that the agent recognizes and understands. It's excellent when it works. If we're using an application that is using an unsupported technology, then we can't instrument it at all. We do use PHP and Contrast presently doesn't support that, although it's on their roadmap. My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"I think there was activity underway to support the centralized configuration control. There are ways to do it, but I think they were productizing more of that."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"Contrast Security Assess covers a wide range of applications like .NET Framework, Java, PSP, Node.js, etc. But there are some like Ubuntu and the .NET Core which are not covered. They have it in their roadmap to have these agents. If they have that, we will have complete coverage."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support. We'll be missing identification of libraries like jQuery or JavaScript, and such, that are client-side."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price depends on the number of licenses needed and the source code for the project."
"Pricing is a bit costly."
"Our organization purchased a license to use the solution."
"The application’s pricing is high compared to other tools."
"I like the per-application licensing model... We just license the app and we look at different vulnerabilities on that app and we remediate within the app. It's simpler."
"The solution is expensive."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"You only get one license for an application. Ours are very big, monolithic applications with millions of lines of code. We were able to apply one license to one monolithic application, which is great. We are happy with the licensing. Pricing-wise, they are industry-standard, which is fine."
"It's a tiered licensing model. The more you buy, as you cross certain quantity thresholds, the pricing changes. If you have a smaller environment, your licensing costs are going to be different than a larger environment... The licensing is primarily per application. An application can be as many agents as you need. If you've got 10 development servers and 20 production servers and 50 QA servers, all of those agents can be reporting as a single application that utilizes one license."
"The good news is that the agent itself comes in two different forms: the unlicensed form and the licensed form. Unlicensed gives use of that software composition analysis for free. Thereafter, if you apply a license to that same agent, that's when the instrumentation takes hold. So one of my suggestions is to do what we're doing: Deploy the agent to as many applications as possible, with just the SCA feature turned on with no license applied, and then you can be more choosy and pick which teams will get the license applied."
"For what it offers, it's a very reasonable cost. The way that it is priced is extremely straightforward. It works on the number of applications that you use, and you license a server. It is something that is extremely fair, because it doesn't take into consideration the number of requests, etc. It is only priced based on the number of onboarded applications. It suits our model as well, because we have huge traffic. Our number of applications is not that large, so the pricing works great for us."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
23%
University
11%
Computer Software Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
24%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise2
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
 

Questions from the Community

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What do you like most about Contrast Security Assess?
When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities.
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
Technical support for the solution should be faster. We have to further analyze what kind of CVEs are in the reported libraries and what part of the code is affected. That analysis can be added to ...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
Contrast Security Assess is deployed on-cloud in our organization. I would recommend Contrast Security Assess to other users. It's a really good tool. It provides lots of details on web-based vulne...
 

Also Known As

No data available
Contrast Assess
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Viveris, Micrel Medical Devices, Olympus, SOFTEQ, SONY
Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Find out what your peers are saying about CodeSonar vs. Contrast Security Assess and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
869,883 professionals have used our research since 2012.