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Coverity Static vs Klocwork comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Sep 15, 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 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
Klocwork
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
17th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (19th), Static Code Analysis (6th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity Static is 6.0%, down from 7.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Klocwork is 1.5%, down from 1.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
Coverity Static6.0%
Klocwork1.5%
Other92.5%
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
 

Featured Reviews

Jaile Sebes - PeerSpot reviewer
Resolving critical software issues demands faster implementation and better integration
We use Coverity primarily to find issues such as software bugs and memory leaks, especially in C++ and C# projects. It helps us identify deadlocks, synchronization issues, and product crashes Coverity has been instrumental in resolving product crashes by detecting various issues like deadlocks.…
AnirbanSarkar - PeerSpot reviewer
Lets you find defects during the development phase, so you don't have to wait till the development is over to find and address flaws
What needs improvement in Klocwork, compared to other products in the market, is the dashboard or reporting mechanisms that need to be a bit more flexible. The Klocwork dashboard could be improved. Though it's good, it's not as good as some of the other products in the market, which is a problem. The reporting could be more detailed and easier to sort out because sorting in Klocwork could be a bit more time-consuming, mainly when sorting defects based on filters, compared to how it's done on other tools such as Coverity. What I'd like added in the next release of Klocwork is the peer code review Cahoots which used to be a part of Klocwork, and the architecture analysis and both have been taken out of Klocwork. I found the two critical for specific deployments, so if those can be brought back to Klocwork, that would be very good.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"What I find most effective about Coverity is its low rate of false positives. I've seen other platforms with many false positives, but with Coverity, most vulnerabilities it identifies are genuine. This allows me to focus on real issues."
"It help us identify the latest security vulnerabilities."
"It is a scalable solution."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"The product is easy to use."
"Coverity gives advisory and deviation features, which are some of the parts I liked."
"We were very comfortable with the initial setup."
"It has the lowest false positives."
"The ability to create custom checkers is a plus."
"Klocwork's most valuable feature is the static code analysis feature. It detects the potential problem earlier to allow the developer to receive feedback quickly and then address it before it becomes a problem."
"The customer support team is very responsive, proactive, and engages in conversations to ensure our needs are met."
"The best advantage of Klocwork is the reduced setup time."
"Technical support is quite good."
"The reporting helps us understand the trend of our results and whether we improve over time. We can see the history within Klocwork's server architecture and know that we're making things better. It creates a great story for our management. We can demonstrate value and how our software is developing over time."
"The most valuable feature of Klocwork is its reduced setup time."
"There's a feature in Klocwork called 'on-the-fly analysis', which helps developers to find and fix the defects at the time of development itself."
 

Cons

"Some features are not performing well, like duplicate detection and switch case situations."
"Coverity takes a lot of time to dereference null pointers."
"They could improve the usability. For example, how you set things up, even though it's straightforward, it could be still be easier."
"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."
"Coverity is not a user-friendly product."
"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."
"The solution is a bit complex to use in comparison to other products that have many plugins."
"Zero-day vulnerability identification can be an add-on feature that Coverity can provide."
"Every update that we receive requires of us a lengthy and involved process."
"We bought Klocwork, but it was limited to one little program, but the program is now sort of failing. So, we have a license for usage on a program that is sort of failing, and we really can't use the license on anything else."
"I believe it should support more languages, such as Python and JavaScript."
"Customers using different static analysis tools report more issues than with Klocwork, indicating that Klocwork's engine is not as superior."
"The main problem is that since it only parses the code, the warnings or the problems that are given as a result of the report can sometimes require a lot of effort to analyze."
"Klocwork does have a problem with true positives. It only found 30% of true positives in the Juliet test case."
"We'd like to see integration with Agile DevOps and Agile methodologies."
"The way to define the rules is too complex. The definition/rules for static analysis could be automated according to various SILs, so as to avoid confusion."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"Coverity is very expensive."
"The solution's pricing is comparable to other products."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"I would rate the tool's pricing a one out of ten."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"Coverity’s price is on the higher side. It should be lower."
"The limitation that we have is that Klocwork is licensed to certain programs, and if you want to license them to other programs, you have to pay more money."
"When it comes to licensing, the solution has two packages, one for a fixed and the other for a floating server, with the former being more cost effective than the latter."
"There are other solutions on the market such as Microsoft Visual Studio. They have been adding more static code analysis features that come for free. It is getting better all the time. That is one of the possibilities is that we've been considering that we may stop using the Klocwork because it doesn't give us any added value."
"Klocwork is still tight on their licensing. If Klocwork would loosen up on the licensing, and where the license could be used, and how many different programs could be run on it, then we have several development programs that I would love to be able to use it for going forward."
"This solution offers competitive pricing."
"Klocwork should not to be quite so heavy handed on the licensing for very specific programs."
"Licensing fees are paid annually, but they also have a perpetual license."
"The pricing for Klocwork is very competitive if you compare it from apple to apple. It has competitive pricing regarding the licensing model and the per-license cost. Klocwork isn't a high-end investment for anyone deploying it; even SMBs can afford it. The Klocwork cost per user would depend on the license type, so I'm unable to mention a ballpark figure because it would depend on the type of installation and how the deployment will be, and the nodes to give an accurate calculation or figure. The total price depends on the package, so my company could never publish pricing for Klocwork on the website. My team first collects information from potential clients on the deployment scenario, project environment, etc., before suggesting a package for Klocwork. My rating for Klocwork in terms of pricing is a five because of its flexible license models. There's a license model for every type of organization, whether small, midsize, or enterprise, so it's a five out of five for me."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Healthcare Company
4%
Manufacturing Company
25%
Computer Software Company
11%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Transportation Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Midsize Enterprise6
Large Enterprise31
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business12
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise12
 

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 is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Klocwork?
Klocwork's pricing seems attractive, as it uses a per-user license model that does not have a lot of overhead.
What needs improvement with Klocwork?
One area for improvement is that when customers use different static analysis tools, they report more issues compared to Klocwork. The static analysis engine of Klocwork has areas that need improve...
What is your primary use case for Klocwork?
I work on tools such as Klocwork, LDRA, as well as Jira and Confluence, focusing more on the software quality assurance aspect. We use Klocwork for coding and aggregate checks. We use it for static...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
ACCESS Co Ltd, Risk-AI, Winbond Electronics, Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute, University of Southern California, Alebra Technologies, SIMULIA, Risk Management Solutions, Brigham Young University, SRD, HRL
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity Static vs. Klocwork and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
872,029 professionals have used our research since 2012.