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Coverity vs OWASP Zap 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

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
OWASP Zap
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
7th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 7.8%, up from 7.1% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of OWASP Zap is 5.0%, down from 6.0% 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.
Amit Beniwal - PeerSpot reviewer
Simplifies vulnerability discovery and has high quality support
There are areas for improvement with OWASP Zap, particularly in the alignment of vulnerabilities concerning CVSS scores. Sometimes, a vulnerability initially categorized as high severity may be reduced to medium or low over time after security patches are applied. This alignment with the present severity score and CVSS score could be improved.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product has deeper scanning capabilities."
"It has the lowest false positives."
"In my opinion, the most effective Coverity feature for identifying critical vulnerabilities is the extra checks, which offers deep analysis."
"The most valuable feature is that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"Coverity is easy to use and easy to integrate with CI."
"It provides reports about a lot of potential defects."
"The tool as it is can be used for code quality improvement."
"The product has been beneficial in logging functionality, allowing me to categorize vulnerabilities based on severity. This aids in providing updated reports on subsequent scans."
"The solution is scalable."
"One valuable feature of OWASP Zap is that it is simple to use."
"The solution is good at reporting the vulnerabilities of the application."
"The most valuable feature is scanning the URL to drill down all the different sites."
"The vulnerabilities that it finds, because the primary goal is to secure applications and websites."
"Automatic updates and pull request analysis."
"Automatic scanning is a valuable feature and very easy to use."
"ZAP is easy to use. The automated scan is a powerful feature. You can simulate attacks with various parameters. ZAP integrates well with SonarQube."
 

Cons

"I had tried integrating the tool with Azure DevOps, but the report I got stated that my team faced many challenges."
"We actually specified several checkers, but we found some checkers had a higher false positive rate. I think this is a problem. Because we have to waste some time is really the issue because the issue is not an issue. I mean, the tool pauses or an issue, but the same issue is the filter now.Some check checkers cannot find some issues, but sometimes they find issues that are not relevant, right, that are not really issues. Some customisation mechanism can be added in the next release so that we can define our Checker. The Modelling feature provided by Coverity helps in finding more information for potential issues but it is not mature enough, it should be mature. The fast testing feature for security testing campaign can be added as well. So if you correctly integrate it with the training team, maybe you can help us to find more potential issues."
"The level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."
"It should be easier to specify your own validation routines and sanitation routines."
"We're currently facing a primary challenge with automation using Coverity. Each developer has a license and can perform manual checks, and we also have a nightly build that analyzes the entire software. The main issue is that the tool can't look behind submodules in our code base, so it doesn't see changes stored there."
"Coverity is far from perfection, and I'm not 100 percent sure it's helping me find what I need to find in my role. We need exactly what we are looking for, i.e. security errors and vulnerabilities. It doesn't seem to be reporting while we are changing our code."
"There is an extra step in my organization that involves uploading to servers, which adds overhead."
"Coverity is not a user-friendly product."
"The product reporting could be improved."
"It would be a great improvement if they could include a marketplace to add extra features to the tool."
"They stopped their support for a short period. They've recently started to come back again. In the early days, support was much better."
"It needs more robust reporting tools."
"There isn't too much information about it online."
"There are too many false positives."
"It would be nice to have a solid SQL injection engine built into Zap."
"The solution is somewhat unreliable because after we get the finding, we have to manually verify each of its findings to see whether it's a false positive or a true finding, and it takes time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"The price is competitive with other solutions."
"It is expensive."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"This is an open-source solution and can be used free of charge."
"As Zap is free and open-source, with tons of features similar to those of commercial solutions, I would definitely recommend trying it out."
"We have used the freeware version. I believe Zap only has freeware."
"The solution’s pricing is high."
"OWASP Zap is free to use."
"It's free and open, currently under the Apache 2 license. If ZAP does what you need it to do, selling a free solution is a very easy."
"This app is completely free and open source. So there is no question about any pricing."
"It is highly recommended as it is an open source tool."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
33%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
7%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
18%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

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.
Is OWASP Zap better than PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro?
OWASP Zap and PortSwigger Burp Suite Pro have many similar features. OWASP Zap has web application scanning available with basic security vulnerabilities while Burp Suite Pro has it available with ...
What do you like most about OWASP Zap?
The best feature is the Zap HUD (Heads Up Display) because the customers can use the website normally. If we scan websites with automatic scanning, and the website has a web application firewall, i...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
1. Google 2. Microsoft 3. IBM 4. Amazon 5. Facebook 6. Twitter 7. LinkedIn 8. Netflix 9. Adobe 10. PayPal 11. Salesforce 12. Cisco 13. Oracle 14. Intel 15. HP 16. Dell 17. VMware 18. Symantec 19. McAfee 20. Citrix 21. Red Hat 22. Juniper Networks 23. SAP 24. Accenture 25. Deloitte 26. Ernst & Young 27. PwC 28. KPMG 29. Capgemini 30. Infosys 31. Wipro 32. TCS
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. OWASP Zap and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,713 professionals have used our research since 2012.