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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
31st
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 (12th), 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 June 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 4.3%, down from 9.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Security Tools Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Veracode4.3%
Contrast Security Assess1.6%
Other94.1%
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.
DK
Lead Information Security Analyst at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Helps ensure that third-party libraries we're using are safe, but the scanning process can be more streamlined
It is somewhat complex compared to Fortify. As a Fortify user for almost five years, I find Veracode complex, but others in my team who have used it for eight to nine years don't find such issues. When we were doing manual scans before CI/CD integration, it was easier. It took approximately four to five months to onboard the solution because it was new to developers as well. There was a certain process to be followed to get access and integrate it into the CI/CD tools. We had to explain the report format to them, showing where they could find vulnerabilities and how they could fix the code, including finding safer versions of libraries and dependencies. This took almost half of 2023, and now in 2025, they do not need our help except for technical problems when there are numerous scans in the pipeline.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"Assess has an excellent API interface to pull APIs."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"We like the fact that all the issues are identified and that Veracode provides sufficient information on how to resolve them."
"The product is very good, very reliable, and they've made a lot of improvements to the dashboards and the reports."
"I appreciate Veracode's SAST and SCA features, which help to find open-source vulnerabilities. I'd estimate it's about 98% accurate, though some false positives occasionally exist. Our team has been using it for a long time."
"Veracode provides visibility into application status at every phase of development through static analysis."
"In that sense, the Veracode system, since we've been using it, has helped us identify and code correct over 34,000 security weaknesses."
"The article scanning is excellent."
"Wide range of platforms and technology assessments."
"The solution can scan old databases and old code written 20 years back."
 

Cons

"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."
"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 out-of-the-box reporting could be improved. We need to write our own APIs to make the reporting more robust."
"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."
"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."
"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 triage indicator was kind of hard to find. It's a very small arrow and I had no idea it was there."
"It would help if there were a training module that would explain how to more effectively integrate the SAST product into the build tool, Jenkins or Bamboo."
"I would like Veracode to also have the ability to fix these flaws in a future release."
"Veracode has plenty of data. The problem is the information on the dashboards of Veracode, as the user interface is not great. It's not immediately usable. Most of the time, the best way to use it is to just create issues and put them in JIRA... But if I were a startup, and only had products with a good user interface, I wouldn't use Veracode because the UI is very dated."
"The interface is one thing I find a little challenging. Veracode's interface feels a little outdated compared to other solutions, and it could be modernized. I'm mostly happy with the features, but Vercaode could add Docker image scanning."
"If Veracode was more diversified, as far as the number of platforms and the number of applications it could do in our favor, we would be using it even more. But there are a number of platforms it doesn't support. For example, I know they support C+, .NET, and Java, but there are certain platforms they don't support and that was disappointing."
"I don't have the on-platform flexibility to sort and filter inspection data, and that's not good."
"The static scans on Java lack microservices architecture scanning. We have developed an in-house pattern for this and the scans can't take care of it as a single entity."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"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."
"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 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."
"We use this product per project rather than per developer... Your development model will really determine what the best fit is for you in terms of licensing, because of the project-based licensing. If you do a few projects, that's more attractive. If you have a large number of developers, that would also make the product a little more attractive."
"The pricing is pretty high."
"For the value we get out of it, coupled with the live defect review sessions, we find it an effective value for the money. We are a larger organization."
"Its complexity makes it quite expensive, but it’s all worth it, with all the engineering in the background."
"The cost has been a barrier to wider use here. I think my team is the only one at the university. Other folks might like to use it, but it's pretty pricey. You could see what else is in the market, but I hear that's the price for most solutions. You might not find a better deal in the market, or it might be an incomplete solution. I mean, for the level of interaction we get with Veracode staff, it's been pretty good."
"Veracode is costly. They have different license models for different customers. What we had was based on the amount of code that has been analyzed. The license that we had was capped to a certain amount, for example, 5 Gig. There would be an extra charge for anything above 5 Gig."
"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."
"It can be expensive to do this, so I would just make sure that you're getting the proper number of licenses. Do your analysis. Make sure you know exactly what it is you need, going in."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
16%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
11%
Government
5%
 

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
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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.
896,692 professionals have used our research since 2012.