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Contrast Security Assess vs OpenText Core Application Security comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 28, 2025

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 Application Security Tools
30th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
27th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
OpenText Core Application S...
Ranking in Application Security Tools
14th
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
62
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.3%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OpenText Core Application Security is 3.2%, down from 4.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
OpenText Core Application Security3.2%
Contrast Security Assess1.3%
Other95.5%
Application Security Tools
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer1605099 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director of Threat and Vulnerability Management at a consultancy with 10,001+ employees
We're gathering vulnerability data from multiple environments in real time, fundamentally changing how we identify issues in applications
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. Assess also provides the option of helping developers incorporate security elements while they're writing code. It depends on whether individual developers decide to utilize the information that's provided to them from the solution, but it definitely gives them visibility into more environments. It gives them an opportunity to remediate vulnerabilities well before production deployments.
Himanshu_Tyagi - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Cybersecurity at TBO
Supports secure development pipelines and improves issue detection but limits internal visibility and needs broader dashboard integration
If you have an internal team and you want your internal team to validate false positives, basically to determine whether it's a valid issue or an invalid issue, then I wouldn't recommend it much. That was the only reason we migrated from Fortify on Demand to another solution. Fortify has another tool which is Fortify WebInspect. On Demand is the outsourcing solution, and WebInspect you can use with your in-house team, which is basically the product developed by the Fortify team. For automated scanning, Fortify helps a lot. Regarding the visibility for the internal team, everyone is moving toward the DevSecOps side, and Fortify team has made good progress that you can integrate into your CICD pipeline. One thing I would highlight is if Fortify can focus more on the centralized dashboard of the tools because nowadays, tools such as SentinelOne also exist for identifying security issues, but they have a centralized dashboard that merges their cloud solution and application security side solution together. If you have one tool that works for different solutions, it helps a lot. They are doing good, but they should invest more on the AI side as well because AI security is evolving these days. On the cloud side, they have already made good progress, but I believe they should explore the new area related to AI security as well.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"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."
"I am impressed with the product's identification of alerts and vulnerabilities."
"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."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"The licensing was good."
"It's a stable and scalable solution."
"The solution is user-friendly. One feature I find very effective is the tool's automatic scanning capability. It scans replicas of the code developers write and automatically detects any vulnerabilities. The integration with CI/CD tools is also useful for plugins."
"What stands out to me is the user-friendliness of each feature."
"Fortify on Demand is easy to use and the reporting is good."
"There is not only one specific feature that we find valuable. The idea is to integrate the solution in DevSecOps which we were able to do."
"Fortify helps us to stay updated with the newest languages and versions coming out."
"I do not remember any issues with stability."
 

Cons

"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"Contrast's ability to support upgrades on the actual agents that get deployed is limited. Our environment is pretty much entirely Java. There are no updates associated with that. You have to actually download a new version of the .jar file and push that out to your servers where your app is hosted. That can be quite cumbersome from a change-management perspective."
"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."
"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."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"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."
"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."
"There are many false positives identified by the solution."
"During development, when our developer makes changes to their code, they typically use GitHub or GitLab to track those changes. However, proper integration between Fortify on Demand and GitHub and GitLab is not there yet. Improved integration would be very valuable to us."
"With Rapid7 I utilized its reporting capabilities to deliver Client Reports within just a few minutes of checking the data. I believe that HP’s FoD Clients could sell more services to clients if HP put more effort into delivering visually pleasing reporting capabilities."
"The technical support is actually a problem that needs to be addressed. Since the acquisition and merger with Hewlett Packard, it has been really hard to know who the technical or salesperson to talk to."
"I would rate the support for OpenText at no more than three out of ten; it is really bad, and we encounter a lot of problems when getting support."
"This solution would be improved if the code-quality perspective were added to it, on top of the security aspect."
"The UI could be better. Fortify should also suggest new packages in the product that can be upgraded. Currently, it shows that, but it's not visible enough. In future versions, I would like more insights about the types of vulnerabilities and the pages associated with the exact CVE."
"An improvement would be the ability to get vulnerabilities flowing automatically into another system."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Fortify on Demand is more expensive than Burpsuite. I rate its pricing a nine out of ten."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand licenses are managed by our IT team and the license model is user-based."
"It is quite expensive. Pricing and the licensing model could be improved."
"Fortify on Demand is moderately priced, but its pricing could be more flexible."
"The pricing model it's based on how many applications you wish to scan."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"The licensing was good because the licenses have the heavy centralized server."
"I'd rate it an eight out of ten in terms of pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
23%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
9%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
8%
Government
8%
 

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 Business17
Midsize Enterprise8
Large Enterprise44
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
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 is competitive. The licenses for Fortify On Demand are generally bought in unit...
What needs improvement with Micro Focus Fortify on Demand?
If you have an internal team and you want your internal team to validate false positives, basically to determine whether it's a valid issue or an invalid issue, then I wouldn't recommend it much. T...
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. OpenText Core Application Security and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
881,665 professionals have used our research since 2012.