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Coverity vs Fortify on Demand comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 12, 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

Coverity
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
42
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Fortify on Demand
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
12th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.8
Number of Reviews
60
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (15th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 8.0%, up from 7.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Fortify on Demand is 4.4%, down from 4.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers impressive reporting features with user-friendliness and high scalability
The solution can be easily setup but requires heavy integration due to the multiple types of port and programming languages involved. Comparing the resource requirements of the solution I would say it can be installed effortlessly. I would rate the initial setup an eight out of ten. A professional needs some pre-acquired knowledge to manage Coverity's deployment process, but the local solution partners provide support well enough for trouble-free deployment. The overall deployment process of Coverity took around two and a half hours in our organization. The deployment duration depends upon the operating system and resources including high-end RAM and CPU processors.
Jonathan Steyn - PeerSpot reviewer
Source code analyzer, FPR file generation, reduction of false positives and generates compliance reports, for in-depth analysis
Not challenges with the product itself. The product is very reliable. It does have a steep learning curve. But, again, one thing that Fortify or OpenText does very well is training. There are a lot of free resources and training in the community forums, free training as well as commercial training where users can train on how to use the back-end systems and the scanning engines and how to use command-line arguments because some of the procedures or some of the tools do require a bit of a learning curve. That's the only challenge I've really seen for customers because you have to learn how to use the tool effectively. But Fortify has, in fact, improved its user interface and the way users engage the dashboards and the interfaces. It is intuitive. It's easy to understand. But in some regards, the cybersecurity specialist or AppSec would need a bit of training to engage the user interface and to understand how it functions. But from the point of the reliability index and how powerful the tool is, there's no challenge there. But it's just from a learning perspective; users might need a bit more skill to use the tool. The user interface isn't that tedious. It's not that difficult to understand. When I initially learned how to use the interfaces, I was able to master it within a week and was able to use it quite effectively. So training is required. All skills are needed to learn how to use the tool. I would like to see more enhancements in the dashboards. Dashboards are available. They do need some configuration and settings. But I would like to see more business intelligence capabilities within the tool. It's not particularly a cybersecurity function, but, for instance, business impact analysis or other features where you can actually use business intelligence capabilities within your security tool. That would be remarkable because not only do you have a cybersecurity tool, but you also have a tool that can give you business impact analysis and some other measurements. A bit more intelligence in terms of that from a cybersecurity perspective would be remarkable.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It's very stable."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is the wrapper. We use the wrapper to build the C++ component, then we use the other code analysis to analyze the code to the build object, and then send back the result to the SonarQube server. Additionally, it is a powerful capabilities solution."
"Coverity gives advisory and deviation features, which are some of the parts I liked."
"Provides software security, and helps to find potential security bugs or defects."
"Coverity is easy to set up and has a less lengthy process to find vulnerabilities."
"The interface of Coverity is quite good, and it is also easy to use."
"Speed and efficiency are great features."
"The most valuable features are the server, scanning, and it has helped identify issues with the security analysis."
"Fortify on Demand's best feature is that there's no need to install and configure it locally since it's on the cloud."
"The installation was easy."
"The most valuable feature is the capacity to be able to check vulnerabilities during the development process. The development team can check whether the code they are using is vulnerable to some type of attack or there is some type of vulnerability so that they can mitigate it. It helps us in achieving a more secure approach towards internal applications. It is an intuitive solution. It gives all the information that a developer needs to remediate a vulnerability in the coding process. It also gives you some examples of how to remediate a vulnerability in different programming languages. This solution is pretty much what we were searching for."
"The quality of application security testing reduces risk and gives very few false positives."
"It is a very easy tool for developers to use in parallel while they're doing the coding. It does auto scanning as we are progressing with the CI/CD pipeline. It has got very simple and efficient API support."
"The features that I have found most valuable include its security scan, the vulnerability finds, and the web interface to search and review the issues."
 

Cons

"We use GitHub and Gitflow, and Coverity does not fit with Gitflow. I have to create a screen for our branches, and it's a pain for developers. It has been difficult to integrate Coverity with our system."
"Coverity's implementation cycle is very slow when integrating changes, especially for problems related to event handling and memory leaks."
"Right now, the Coverity executable is around 1.2GB to download. If they can reduce it to approximately 600 or 700MB, that would be great. If they decrease the executable, it will be much easier to work in an environment like Docker."
"Zero-day vulnerability identification can be an add-on feature that Coverity can provide."
"The product could be enhanced by providing video troubleshooting guides, making issue resolution more accessible. Troubleshooting without visual guides can be time-consuming."
"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."
"The solution's user interface and quality gate could be improved."
"The tool needs to improve its reporting."
"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 Visual Studio plugin seems to hang when a scan is run on big projects. I would expect some improvements there."
"The biggest deficiency is the integration with bug tracker systems. It might be better if the configuration screen presented for accessing the bug tracking systems could provide some flexibility."
"I would like to see improvement in CI integration and integration with GitLab or Jenkins. It needs to be more simple."
"In terms of what could be improved, we need more strategic analysis reports, not just for one specific application, but for the whole enterprise. In the next release, we need more reports and more analytic views for all the applications. There is no enterprise view in Fortify. I would like enterprise views and reports."
"Primarily for a complex, advanced website, they don't really understand some of the functionalities. So for instance, they could tell us that there is a vulnerability because somebody could possibly do something, but they don't really understand the code to realize that we actually negate that vulnerability through some other mechanism in the program. In addition, the technical support is just not there. We have open tickets. They don't respond. Even if they respond, we're not seeing eye to eye. As the company got sold and bought, the support got worse."
"In terms of communication, they can integrate a few more third-party tools. It would be great if we can have more options for microservice communication. They can also improve the securability a bit more because security is one of the biggest aspects these days when you are using the cloud. Some more security features would be really helpful."
"The thing that could be improved is reducing the cost of usage and including some of the most pricey features, such as dynamic analysis and that sort of functionality, which makes the difference between different types of tools."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."
"Coverity is quite expensive."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"Coverity is very expensive."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"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."
"We make an annual purchase of the licenses we need."
"Micro Focus Fortify on Demand licenses are managed by our IT team and the license model is user-based."
"There are different costs for Micro Focus Fortify on Demand depending on the assessments you want to use. There is only a standard license needed to use the solution."
"It is quite expensive. Pricing and the licensing model could be improved."
"Despite being on the higher end in terms of cost, the biggest value lies in its abilities, including robust features, seamless integration, and high-quality findings."
"The solution is a little expensive."
"It's a yearly contract, but I don't remember the dollar amount."
"Buying a license would be feasible for regular use. For intermittent use, the cloud-based option can be used (Fortify on Demand)."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Financial Services Firm
20%
Manufacturing Company
15%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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 do you like most about Coverity?
The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.
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?
There are frequent complaints about false positives from Fortify. One day it may pass a scan with no issues, and the next day, without any code changes, it will report vulnerabilities such as passw...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Micro Focus Fortify on Demand
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
SAP, Aaron's, British Gas, FICO, Cox Automative, Callcredit Information Group, Vital and more.
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. Fortify on Demand and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
845,040 professionals have used our research since 2012.