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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
32nd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (26th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of CodeSonar is 1.1%, down from 1.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CodeSonar1.1%
Contrast Security Assess1.6%
Other97.3%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

Mathieu ALBRESPY - PeerSpot reviewer
Intigration Developer at ez-Wheel
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.
ToddMcAlister - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Application and Data Security Engineer at a insurance company with 5,001-10,000 employees
It has an excellent API interface to pull APIs.
Assess has brought our development time down because it helps create code the first time. Instead of going through the Jenkins process to build an application, they can see right off the bat that if there are errors in the code and fix them before it even goes to build.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It has been able to scale."
"The most valuable feature of CodeSonar is the catching of dead code. It is helpful."
"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."
"What I like best about CodeSonar is that it has fantastic speed, analysis and configuration times."
"I would suggest trying out automated tools along with CodeSonar on your project, and you will find out that CodeSonar reports many more defects compared to other static analysis tools, so this is a very important tool."
"CodeSonar has helped our organization because it detects dead and nonusable parts of code to create a more optimized code."
"The solution is very stable and we have used it for a long time with no issues."
"The most valuable features of CodeSonar were all the categorized classes provided, and reports of future bugs which might occur in the production code."
"It has helped us to improve the overall security posture of the company, we are able to address the findings before they have been reported by a third-party, and it has also helped us to gain our customers' trust."
"Overall, the product is strong and improving, support is responsive and effective, and supported integrations work for many customers."
"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."
"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."
"One of the key takeaways is that in order to have a secure application, you cannot rely on just the pentest, vulnerability assessments, and the periodicity of the reviews; you need the real-time feedback on that, and Contrast Assess offers that."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
 

Cons

"It would be beneficial for the solution to include code standards and additional functionality for security."
"The scanning tool for core architecture could be improved."
"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."
"CodeSonar could improve by having better coding rules so we did not have to use another solution, such as MISRA C."
"It was difficult for us to apply a rule, especially to a part of the code, and not apply it to the rest of the code."
"It would be beneficial for the solution to include code standards and additional functionality for security."
"The scanning tool for core architecture could be improved."
"It was expensive."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support."
"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"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."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"The out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Our organization purchased a license to use the solution."
"The application’s pricing is high compared to other tools."
"Pricing is a bit costly."
"The solution's price depends on the number of licenses needed and the source code for the project."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"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."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
24%
Computer Software Company
8%
University
7%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
 

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
 

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: April 2026.
896,387 professionals have used our research since 2012.