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Contrast Security Assess vs Coverity Static comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (25th)
Coverity Static
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
17th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.4%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Coverity Static is 2.6%, down from 6.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Contrast Security Assess1.4%
Coverity Static2.6%
Other96.0%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Ryan Flake - PeerSpot reviewer
Threat & Vulnerability Management Senior Analyst at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Real-time assessments have improved remediation speed and reduced time spent on authentication issues
I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries. The way that it works is people have access to library data for all applications, not just the applications that they should have access to. However, they are trying to fix that. The way the libraries are handled with Contrast Security Assess could use some work. I know that there is an additional service tier that allows for more in-depth library data. These are small things. Contrast support has been great in fixing any issues or getting back to us with questions. They seem to really be dedicated to the product.
Jaile Sebes - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Software Architect at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Resolving critical software issues demands faster implementation and better integration
We use Coverity primarily to find issues such as software bugs and memory leaks, especially in C++ and C# projects. It helps us identify deadlocks, synchronization issues, and product crashes Coverity has been instrumental in resolving product crashes by detecting various issues like deadlocks.…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The time it saves us is on the order of one US-based FTE, a security person at an average pay level, and at a bare minimum Contrast helps us like that resource; it's like having a CISSP guy, in the US, on our payroll."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"Contrast was a very complete solution; it met all of our technical requirements and it was really the only IAST product that felt like a real product."
"You cannot get much better than Contrast Security Assess for large deployments of applications and also critical applications."
"From a percentage perspective, somewhere around 90 percent of the time we used to spend has been given back to our team, because the false positive rate with Contrast is less than 5 percent."
"Contrast Security Assess has positively impacted my organization by improving the security features of our application."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"One of the most valuable features is Contributing Events. That particular feature helps the developer understand the root cause of a defect. So you can locate the starting point of the defect and figure out exactly how it is being exploited."
"The solution has improved our code quality and security very well."
"Considering the analysis part and the benchmarking process involving the product that my company carried out, the solution is good for finding bugs and violations"
"It provides reports about a lot of potential defects."
"I encountered a bug with Coverity, and I opened a ticket. Support provided me with a workaround. So it's working at the moment, or at least it seems to be."
"What I find most effective about Coverity is its low rate of false positives. I've seen other platforms with many false positives, but with Coverity, most vulnerabilities it identifies are genuine. This allows me to focus on real issues."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to find vulnerabilities in our code."
"The most valuable feature is the integration with Jenkins."
 

Cons

"The setup of the solution is different for each application. That's the one thing that has been a challenge for us. The deployment itself is simple, but it's tough to automate because each application is different, so each installation process for Contrast is different."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end. The reports could be adaptable to the customer's preferences."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate Contrast Security Assess a seven out of ten because I think it's a good product, better than average, but I'm sure it has a lot of room for growth."
"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."
"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 reporting tool integration process is sometimes slow."
"The quality of the code needs improvement."
"Coverity is not stable but it is sufficient for our organization's requirements."
"My personal opinion is that the webpage of the last version of Coverity is not very easy to use."
"Reporting engine needs to be more robust. Custom reporting is a must have."
"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"Coverity's implementation cycle is very slow when integrating changes, especially for problems related to event handling and memory leaks."
"It should be easier to specify your own validation routines and sanitation routines."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"The product's pricing is low. I would rate it a two out of ten."
"The solution is expensive."
"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."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"Coverity is very expensive."
"The tool's price is somewhere in the middle. It's neither cheap nor expensive. I would rate the pricing a five out of ten."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
"The solution is affordable."
"Coverity is quite expensive."
"Offers varying prices for different companies"
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Comms Service Provider
12%
Construction Company
7%
Manufacturing Company
26%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
5%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise11
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Contrast Security Assess?
I was not involved in the negotiation of pricing for Contrast Security Assess, but I am somewhat familiar with setup cost and licensing. Licensing costs are fairly high compared to other DAST and S...
What needs improvement with Contrast Security Assess?
I do find that here and there with Contrast Security Assess there are user interface issues, particularly with how they work with libraries. The way that it works is people have access to library d...
What advice do you have for others considering Contrast Security Assess?
I would give Contrast Security Assess a score of 8 out of 10. That is a small little issue, but it is a great product and I would recommend it to others. There are a couple things that could be imp...
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...
What needs improvement with Coverity?
The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through. Support with Coverity is adequate, but they take a longer time to respond. The core support is not straightforward, an...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Synopsys Static Analysis
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Coverity Static and other solutions. Updated: September 2026.
916,212 professionals have used our research since 2012.