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Contrast Security Assess vs Veracode 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

Contrast Security Assess
Ranking in Application Security Tools
32nd
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
26th
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
11
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Veracode
Ranking in Application Security Tools
3rd
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
3rd
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
208
Ranking in other categories
Container Security (10th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (2nd), Static Code Analysis (1st), Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) (1st), Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Application Security Tools category, the mindshare of Contrast Security Assess is 1.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Veracode is 4.4%, down from 9.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Veracode4.4%
Contrast Security Assess1.6%
Other94.0%
Application Security Tools
 

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.
SR
Principal Architect at a consultancy with 11-50 employees
Early detection of vulnerabilities saves significant amount of time and effort
Veracode provides visibility into application status at every phase of development, as it's how we stitch it together, allowing us to introduce it at various phases to gain fast feedback. This capability increases the velocity in DevSecOps processes as developers receive feedback on vulnerabilities before committing, reducing the overall rework. It helps developers save time significantly. For instance, if I take a library and assume it's going to work until it reaches QA or UAT, where we find out there's a vulnerability, that can require extensive effort for code refactoring or redesigning; Veracode helps prevent that before the pull request is merged. Veracode impacts the overall security posture by maintaining data integrity, ensuring we are not exposed to threats from third-party libraries with known vulnerabilities. From my perspective as a SecDevOps evangelist, Veracode is crucial for an organization's shift-left security strategy. Veracode's SCA perspective offers tools that facilitate shift-left security by providing feedback before failures occur in the development process.

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 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."
"By far, the thing that was able to provide value was the immediate response while testing ahead of release, in real-time."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"When we access the application, it continuously monitors and detects vulnerabilities."
"In our most critical applications, we have a deep dive in the code evaluation, which was something we usually did with periodic vulnerability assessments, code reviews, etc. Now, we have real time access to it. It's something that has greatly enhanced our code's quality. We have actually embedded a KPI in regards to the improvement of our code shell. For example, Contrast provides a baseline where libraries and the usability of the code are evaluated, and they produce a score. We always aim to improve that score. On a quarterly basis, we have added this to our KPIs."
"It does software composition analysis, discovering open source software weaknesses."
"They also have what's called a Software Composition Analysis that can point out errors and fixes for third-party software frameworks, which is very nice."
"To me, the principal feature is the CLI (command-line interface) because I put together a lot of implementations using it. Another important aspect is the low false-positive rate because the solution is very configurable. It is as low as 1 percent and that is a huge difference compared to competitors."
"I believe the static analysis is Veracode's best and most valuable feature. Software composition analysis is a feature that most people don't use, and we don't use SCA for most of our applications. However, this is an essential feature because it provides insight into the third-party libraries we use."
"I liked that I could easily find out where my errors were. Instead of going through the whole code and the scripts, it showed me where the errors were and gave me an idea of how to fix them."
"The CI/CD integration is the most valuable feature of Veracode."
"The most valuable feature is the seamless automation of Veracode via the pipeline, in comparison to other solutions like Fortify SSC, which are complex to integrate through the pipeline."
"The most valuable feature is the SAST capability and its integration into the Veracode pipelines."
 

Cons

"The solution needs to improve flexibility...The scalability of the product is a problem in the solution, especially from a commercial perspective."
"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."
"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."
"Personalization of the board and how to make it appealing to an organization is something that could be done on their end."
"My primary hurdle is that it doesn't support all of the technologies that we use."
"I would like to see them come up with more scanning rules."
"Regarding the solution's OSS feature, the one drawback that we do have is that it does not have client-side support."
"The solution should provide more details in the section where it shows that third-party libraries have CVEs or some vulnerabilities."
"It can be a bit complex because it takes a lot of time to have it complete the task."
"In the last month or so, I had a problem with the APIs when doing some implementations. The Veracode support team could be more specific and give me more examples. They shouldn't just copy the URL for a doc and send it to me."
"The security labs integration has room for improvement."
"Some important languages are not supported."
"They cover a lot of languages already and it doesn't make sense for them to cover legacy languages but I know there is a need for covering legacy languages."
"It needs better controls to include or exclude specific sections when creating a report that can be shared externally with customers and prospects."
"We use Ruby on Rails and we still don't have any support for that from Veracode."
"Static scanning takes a long time, so you need to patiently wait for the scan to achieve. I also think the software could be more accurate. It isn't 100 percent, so you shouldn't completely rely on Veracode. You need to manually verify its findings."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Licensing is pretty flexible. It's a little bit weird, it's by the size of the binary, which is a strange way to license a product. So far they've been pretty flexible about it."
"For enterprises, Veracode has done a fairly good job, but its pricing is not suitable for startups. The microservice distributed architecture for a startup is very small. I had to do a lot of discussions on the pricing initially. I previously worked in an enterprise organization where I used Veracode, and that's how I got to know about Veracode, but that was a big organization with more than a thousand employees. So, the cost is very different for them because the size of the application is different. Its pricing makes sense there, but when we try to onboard this solution for the startup ecosystem, pricing is not friendly. Because I knew the product and I knew its value, I onboarded it, but I don't think any other startup at our scale will onboard it."
"I don't have firsthand knowledge of Veracode pricing, but based on client feedback, it seems to be expensive with additional fees for certain features."
"Pricing seems fair for what is offered, and licensing has been no problem. All developers are able to get the access they need."
"The solution is expensive."
"Veracode is one of the more expensive solutions in the market, but it is worth the expense because of the eLearning and the security consultations; everything is included in the license."
"I think the pricing is in line with the rest of the tools. I think you get what you pay for. It is certainly not inexpensive, but the value proposition is there. There are certainly cheaper tools, but I don't think we'd be getting the support that we get with those, and that is what separates this product from the others."
"The cost of scanning code is cheaper. It's typically $0.50 per line of code. However, it's expensive to run a high-level process that would normally require a human security expert. For example, penetration testing costs about $1,000 per application for penetration testing. The cost of these features may be too high for smaller organizations. On the other hand, Veracode's interactive application security testing is fast and cheaper compared to other software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Computer Software Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
6%
 

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 Business69
Midsize Enterprise45
Large Enterprise115
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
Which gives you more for your money - SonarQube or Veracode?
SonarQube is easy to deploy and configure, and also integrates well with other tools to do quality code analysis. SonarQube has a great community edition, which is open-source and free. Easy to use...
What is the biggest difference between Veracode and Checkmarx?
According to my experience of using both the tools in different organizations Veracode is a Cloud-native, managed AppSec platform with strong focus on ease of use, it is SaaS delivery, and provide...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Veracode Static Analysis?
My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing for Veracode is that it is fairly moderate.
 

Also Known As

Contrast Assess
Crashtest Security , Veracode Detect
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Williams-Sonoma, Autodesk, HUAWEI, Chromeriver, RingCentral, Demandware.
Manhattan Associates, Azalea Health, Sabre, QAD, Floor & Decor, Prophecy International, SchoolCNXT, Keap, Rekner, Cox Automotive, Automation Anywhere, State of Missouri and others.
Find out what your peers are saying about Contrast Security Assess vs. Veracode and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
895,891 professionals have used our research since 2012.