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Contrast Security Assess vs Coverity Static comparison

 

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)
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (32nd)
Coverity Static
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
5th
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 May 2026, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.2%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Coverity Static is 3.0%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Coverity Static3.0%
Contrast Security Assess1.2%
Other95.8%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

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.
BL
Software Quality Expert at Endress+Hauser AG
Useful for extra checks but not recommended for C++
We're currently facing a primary challenge with automation using Coverity. Each developer has a license and can perform manual checks, and we also have a nightly build that analyzes the entire software. The main issue is that the tool can't look behind submodules in our code base, so it doesn't see changes stored there. This limitation means it can't detect changes accurately, forcing us to analyze all files instead of just the modified ones. It struggles with repositories organized with different submodules. Although documentation suggests it's possible to configure Coverity to handle this, it requires effort. The solution's analysis tools are high-quality, but the web design could improve. For example, the data is organized into pages when there are many findings, such as ten thousand lines of information. Each page shows about a hundred items, and navigating through these pages (from items 100 to 200, 200 to 300, and so on) can be cumbersome. I've heard from a colleague about another Synopsys tool with a very good GUI. It might be a solution for us to include with Coverity. We invested in Coverity, but compared to SonarQube, it lacks a good interface. SonarQube has a responsive, intuitive GUI, but its analysis quality isn't as good as Coverity's. Coverity's interface isn't great, but its analysis is much better. We hope Synopsys will improve Coverity because it doesn't make a good impression when you first use it. We started with the command line and saw the results were very good. We moved from another tool with a slightly better GUI, but it crashed often, so Coverity was an improvement. When I used the solution earlier, I noticed some issues. It supports C++, which we use, but there's room for improvement. Coverity has two plug-ins. The newer one works well for languages like C# or Java and is very responsive. When we evaluated it with Synopsys, they presented it as easy to configure and install. However, C++ slows down significantly because it's analyzing in the background. It's not very responsive when typing, likely due to the many included files in C++ that need analysis. It's not as quick as with C# or other languages, where you get immediate feedback from Coverity. The classic plug-in is still supported but old-fashioned. It has a manual option, but I haven't checked it. The main problem for C++ users who prefer the old plug-in is responsiveness.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"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."
"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."
"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 most valuable feature is the continuous monitoring aspect: the fact that we don't have to wait for scans to complete for the tool to identify vulnerabilities. They're automatically identified through developers' business-as-usual processes."
"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."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"The solution was very simple to set up."
"The solution has improved our code quality and security very well."
"Coverity is easy to set up and has a less lengthy process to find vulnerabilities."
"Coverity integrates with issue-tracking systems like Jira and provides email notifications, alerts, and other features."
"The solution has helped to increase staff productivity and improved our work significantly by approximately 20 percent."
"The app analysis is the most valuable feature as I know other solutions don't have that."
"Coverity provides excellent compliance and other features, which is a very good part."
"Coverity is quite stable and we haven’t had any issues or any downtime."
 

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."
"Their level of support and troubleshooting for the product is limited because of how they handle troubleshooting. It's done through a log file that's very cumbersome to work with."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"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."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end."
"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 solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."
"Coverity is not stable but it is sufficient for our organization's requirements."
"Reporting engine needs to be more robust. Custom reporting is a must have."
"When I put my code into Coverity for scanning, the code information of the product is in the system. The solution could be improved by providing a SBOM, a software bill of material."
"Coverity takes a lot of time to dereference null pointers."
"It would be great if we could customize the rules to focus on critical issues."
"We're currently facing a primary challenge with automation using Coverity. Each developer has a license and can perform manual checks, and we also have a nightly build that analyzes the entire software. The main issue is that the tool can't look behind submodules in our code base, so it doesn't see changes stored there."
"Ideally, it would have a user-based license that does not have a restriction in the number of lines of code."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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 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."
"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."
"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."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"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."
"Coverity is very expensive."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"I would rate Coverity's pricing as a nine out of ten. It's already very expensive, and it's a problem for us to get more licenses due to the price. The pricing model has some good aspects - for example, a personal license gives access to all languages without code limitations, which is better than some competitors. However, it's still a lot of money for us to spend."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"The pricing is very reasonable compared to other platforms. It is based on a three year license."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
Manufacturing Company
30%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Comms Service Provider
4%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise3
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
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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: April 2026.
896,467 professionals have used our research since 2012.