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Coverity vs Qualys Web Application Scanning comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jul 6, 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)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
43
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Qualys Web Application Scan...
Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
9th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.3
Number of Reviews
39
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (13th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category, the mindshare of Coverity is 7.2%, up from 6.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Qualys Web Application Scanning is 2.1%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
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.…
Kelvin Oladipo - PeerSpot reviewer
User-friendly scanning provides valuable vulnerability insights, but pricing improvements are needed
Qualys Web Application Scanning ( /products/qualys-web-application-scanning-reviews ) is user-friendly, easy to understand, easy to use, and easy to deploy. Credential scanning is very effective because it goes in-depth into the system, crawling the pages, and reporting on vulnerabilities. The product helps by providing options for remediating vulnerabilities it finds, making it really useful.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The product is easy to use."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is its interprocedural analysis, which is advantageous because it compares favorably with other tools in terms of security and code analysis."
"The most valuable feature of Coverity is that it shows examples of what is actually wrong with the code."
"The tool as it is can be used for code quality improvement."
"The solution has helped to increase staff productivity and improved our work significantly by approximately 20 percent."
"The most valuable feature is that there were not a whole lot of false positives, at least on the codebases that I looked at."
"It is a scalable solution."
"The security analysis features are the most valuable features of this solution."
"Licensing is the most valuable. Qualys provides the best licensing for companies. It is the best product for the development purposes of web applications. The product has a lot of integrations."
"The interface is user-friendly and easy to understand."
"​This product is designed for easy scalability and can easily scale up ​without major challenges."
"It combines both web application vulnerability management and internal vulnerability management on one platform and dashboard. Usually, you have to purchase separate tools."
"It is a cloud-based solution, so it is easy to scale."
"The most valuable feature of Qualys Web Application Scanning is the effective scanning that can be done."
"​We have experienced quick customer support. They have a complete list of our previous issues along with our history, which makes it faster for them to solve issues.​"
"It is a good product for website penetration testing to detect vulnerabilities."
 

Cons

"Ideally, it would have a user-based license that does not have a restriction in the number of lines of code."
"The price is a concern, and there are a lot of false positives coming through."
"Coverity concerns its dashboards and reporting."
"Some features are not performing well, like duplicate detection and switch case situations."
"They could improve the usability. For example, how you set things up, even though it's straightforward, it could be still be easier."
"The quality of the code needs improvement."
"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."
"Coverity is not a user-friendly product."
"We procured around 110 licenses for Web Application Scanning, but we have issues running concurrent scans. I don't currently have the option to trigger scans for all 100-plus websites. The default limit is around 10 conference scans. It's not very scalable, to be honest, because of the limitation that they put on concurrent scans."
"The product should allow users to upload their payloads."
"We have many websites. We don't force scanning on all of them at once because it's taking some time."
"The pricing does not seem to be competitive."
"The area of false positives could be improved. There are quite a number of false positives as compared to other solutions. They could probably fine tune the algorithm to be able to reduce the number of false positives being detected."
"It should have better automatic reporting."
"When comparing this solution to Veracode, Veracode has good interactive features and gives a clear understanding of what the vulnerabilities are, which error line of the vulnerability is on and what can be done. It gives interactive features, whereas this solution does not give a clear understanding of where or how to fix the problem."
"In certain cases, this product does have false positives, which the company should work on."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Offers varying prices for different companies"
"The licensing fees are based on the number of lines of code."
"Depending on the usage types, one has to opt for different types of licenses from Coverity, especially to be able to use areas like report viewing or report generation."
"The tool was fairly priced."
"It is expensive."
"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."
"I rate Coverity's price a ten on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."
"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."
"There are different options available with respect to licensing."
"The product is expensive, at least initially, in comparison to other products in this category."
"We normally purchase an annual license."
"We are on an annual license for the solution and the pricing could be more affordable."
"The product has a very good licensing model."
"It is an expensive platform."
"Qualys Web Application Scanning's pricing is a bit expensive compared to other solutions available in the market."
"Qualys WAS' pricing is competitive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Manufacturing Company
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
6%
Government
4%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Manufacturing Company
11%
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.
What do you like most about Qualys Web Application Scanning?
The vulnerability management feature is a strong one. And also the patch management feature.
What needs improvement with Qualys Web Application Scanning?
I would like it to be cheaper because it is a bit expensive compared to competitors like Tenable Nessus ( /products/tenable-nessus-reviews ). After using the product for a year, I might have more s...
 

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis
Qualys WAS
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space
BskyB, Cartagena, ClearPoint Learning Systems, Connect Group, du, Fortrex Technologies, HBOR, HDI, Highlights for Children, The Lithuanian State Enterprise Centre of Registers, City of Miami Beach, Microsoft, MidlandHR, MSCI Inc., Northern Arizona University, Ofgem, Olympus Europa, PhoneFactor, RTL Nederland, ThousandEyes, VGZ Organisatie B.V.
Find out what your peers are saying about Coverity vs. Qualys Web Application Scanning and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
863,679 professionals have used our research since 2012.