Coverity vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) comparison

Black Duck and Sonar are both solutions in the Static Application Security Testing (SAST) category. Black Duck is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.0, while Sonar is ranked #1 with an average rating of 8.2. Black Duck holds a 7.8% mindshare in SAST, compared to Sonar’s 27.4% mindshare. Additionally, 88% of Black Duck users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 81% of Sonar users who would recommend it.

Coverity

Read 42 Coverity reviews

13,201 Views
9,033 Comparison Views

88% willing to recommend

SonarQube Server (formerly ...

Read 113 SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) reviews

42,185 Views
34,676 Comparison Views

81% willing to recommend

Coverity

SonarQube Server (formerly ...

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Oct 30, 2024

SonarQube Server and Coverity compete in the software quality assurance domain. SonarQube seems to have the upper hand due to its open-source nature, community-driven support, and effective integration capabilities.

Features: SonarQube Server prioritizes ease of installation, features a stable platform, and provides extensive support for various tech stacks. It includes a free community edition and efficiently identifies vulnerabilities with a low false positive rate. Coverity offers low false positive rates, inline context-sensitive help, and rapid scanning, making it ideal for complex codebases.

Room for Improvement: SonarQube could improve with enhanced language support, more automation in task creation post-scan, and better enterprise reporting. Coverity struggles with high false positives, a limited user interface for non-technical users, and cumbersome reporting. Enhanced IDE integration and a more intuitive GUI would benefit users.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SonarQube provides flexible deployment options, including on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid solutions, with customer support varying based on the package. Coverity mainly deploys on-premises with limited cloud options, and users often find its support lacking in immediacy and overall satisfaction.

Pricing and ROI: SonarQube is cost-efficient with its free community edition, accessible for smaller teams, providing significant ROI through open-source availability. Coverity's pricing is high due to user licenses, making it less accessible for smaller companies and impacting its perceived ROI.

To learn more, read our detailed Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Report (Updated: January 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

January 2025

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Helped 832,138 peers since 2012

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

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

SonarQube Server (formerly ...

Ranking in Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

1st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

113

Ranking in other categories

Application Security Tools (1st), Software Development Analytics (1st)

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 SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) is 27.4%, down from 28.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

Featured Reviews

Md. Shahriar Hussain

Information Security Analyst at Banglalink

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.

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Wang Dayong

Senior Software Engineering Manager at Hill

Easy to integrate and has a plug-in that supports both C and C++ languages

The product provides false reports sometimes. It also fails to understand the context of the code. It reports that a line of code has issues without considering its relation with the previous line. The product should improve the report quality. While it asks us to improve the code quality, it would be good if it also suggests how to improve the quality.

Read full review

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."

"The features I find most valuable is that our entire company can publish the analysis results into our central space."

"It's pretty stable. I rate the stability of Coverity nine out of ten."

"It's very stable."

"I encountered a bug with Coverity, and I opened a ticket. Support provided me with a workaround. So it's working at the moment, or at least it seems to be."

"The solution has improved our code quality and security very well."

"Provides software security, and helps to find potential security bugs or defects."

"Coverity is easy to use and easy to integrate with CI."

More Coverity pros

"It automatically scans for code, detects vulnerabilities, and generates daily reports."

"It easily ties into our continuous integration pipeline."

"The SonarQube dashboard looks great."

"The solution has a wide variety of features and an open-source community that you are able to learn Java, JavaScript, or any other programing language."

"The features of SonarQube that I find most valuable for identifying code smells are its comprehensive code analysis capabilities, which cover various aspects of code sustainability."

"We have worked with the support from SonarQube and we have had good experiences."

"SonarQube is good in terms of code review and to report on basic vulnerabilities in your applications."

"I like that it covers most programming languages for source code review."

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pros

Cons

"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."

"We'd like it to be faster."

"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 level of vulnerability that this solution covers could be improved compared to other open source tools."

"I had tried integrating the tool with Azure DevOps, but the report I got stated that my team faced many challenges."

"The quality of the code needs improvement."

"The solution is a bit complex to use in comparison to other products that have many plugins."

"Sometimes, vulnerabilities remain unidentified even after setting up the rules."

More Coverity cons

"There could be better integration with other products."

"If I configure a project in SonarQube, it generates a token. When we're compiling our code with SonarQube, we have to provide the token for security reasons. If IP-based connectivity is established with the solution, the project should automatically be populated without providing any additional token. It will be easy to provide just the IP address. It currently supports this functionality, but it makes a different branch in the project dashboard. From the configuration and dashboard point of view, it should have some transformations. There can be dashboard integration so that we can configure the dashboard for different purposes."

"The learning curve can be fairly steep at first, but then, it's not an entry-level type of application. It's not like an introduction to C programming. You should know not just C programming and how to make projects but also how to apply its findings to the bigger picture. I've had users who said that they wish it was easier to understand how to configure, but I don't know if that's doable because what it's doing is a very complicated thing. I don't know if it is possible to make a complicated thing trivially simple."

"Monitoring is a feature that can be improved in the next version."

"In the next release, I would like to have notifications because now, it is a bit difficult. I think that's a feature which we could add there and it would benefit the users as well. For every full request, they should be able to see their bugs or vulnerability directly on the surface."

"I would like to see SonarQube implement a good amount of improvements to the product's security features. Another aspect of SonarQube that could be improved is the search functionality."

"The handling of the contents of Docker container images could be better."

"We have tens of millions of code to be analyzed and processed. There can be some performance degradation if we are applying Sonar Link to large code or code that is complex. When the code had to be analyzed is when we ran into the main issues. There were several routines involved to solve those performance issues but this process should be improved."

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is affordable."

"Coverity is very expensive."

"The pricing is on the expensive side, and we are paying for a couple of items."

"Coverity is quite expensive."

"The tool was fairly priced."

"The price is competitive with other solutions."

"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, where one is low, and ten is high price."

"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."

More Coverity pricing and cost advice

"We use the free version; there are no hidden costs or licensing required."

"The solution has a free version and a license version. The license is priced reasonably, the cost of hiring one programmer is more expensive than the solution."

"There are many different packages with different pricing options available. We are able to try what we have and if we need extra features we can upgrade the license."

"Compared to similar solutions, SonarQube was more accessible to us and had more benefits, with regards to size of the code base and supported languages. Apart from the Enterprise licensing fee, there are no additional costs."

"A low cost long-term solution for non-critical situations."

"This product is open source and very convenient."

"The tool's pricing is reasonable."

"The price of the solution could be reduced."

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) pricing and cost advice

See which vendors are best for you

Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Static Application Security Testing (SAST) solutions are best for your needs.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Manufacturing Company

32%

Computer Software Company

15%

Financial Services Firm

Government

Financial Services Firm

17%

Computer Software Company

15%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Government

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...

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What do you like most about Coverity?

The solution has improved our code quality and security very well.

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Coverity?

I do not know about the pricing.

See all answers

Is SonarQube the best tool for static analysis?

I am not very familiar with SonarQube and their solutions, so I can not answer. But if you are asking me about which tools that are the best for for Static Code Analysis, I suggest you have a look...

See all answers

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...

See all answers

How does Snyk compare with SonarQube?

Snyk does a great job identifying and reducing vulnerabilities. This solution is fully automated and monitors 24/7 to find any issues reported on the internet. It will store dependencies that you a...

See all answers

Comparisons

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Veracode vs Coverity

Compared 5% of the time

Polyspace Code Prover vs Coverity

Compared 5% of the time

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Compared 15% of the time

SonarQube Cloud (formerly SonarCloud) vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 12% of the time

GitHub Advanced Security vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 10% of the time

Veracode vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 8% of the time

Snyk vs SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

Compared 4% of the time

More SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Coverity

February 2025

Download Coverity product report

Buyer's Guide

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

January 2025

SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) report

Download SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube) product report

Also Known As

Synopsys Static Analysis

Sonar

Interactive Demo

Demo not available

Black Duck

Sonar

Overview

Coverity gives you the speed, ease of use, accuracy, industry standards compliance, and scalability that you need to develop high-quality, secure applications. Coverity identifies critical software quality defects and security vulnerabilities in code as it’s written, early in the development process, when it’s least costly and easiest to fix. With the Code Sight integrated development environment (IDE) plugin, developers get accurate analysis in seconds in their IDE as they code. Precise actionable remediation advice and context-specific eLearning help your developers understand how to fix their prioritized issues quickly, without having to become security experts.

Coverity seamlessly integrates automated security testing into your CI/CD pipelines and supports your existing development tools and workflows. Choose where and how to do your development: on-premises or in the cloud with the Polaris Software Integrity Platform (SaaS), a highly scalable, cloud-based application security platform. Coverity supports more than 20 languages and 200 frameworks and templates.

Black Duck

SonarQube Server enhances code quality and security via static code analysis. It detects vulnerabilities, improves standards, and reduces technical debt, integrating into CI/CD pipelines.

SonarQube Server is a comprehensive tool for enhancing code quality and security. It offers static code analysis to identify vulnerabilities, improve coding standards, and reduce technical debt. By integrating into CI/CD pipelines, it provides automated checks for adherence to best practices. Organizations use it for code inspection, security testing, and compliance, ensuring development environments with better maintainability and fewer issues.

What are the key features of SonarQube Server?

Support for 20+ languages: Extensive programming language support suitable for diverse coding environments.
Custom coding rules: Allows for tailored rule sets to match specific coding standards.
Flexible quality gates: Define criteria for code acceptance at various intervals.
CI/CD integration: Seamless integration with Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment tools.
Rich interface: User-friendly dashboard with detailed visual insights.

What benefits should users expect from SonarQube Server?

Improved code quality: Enhanced analysis contributes to fewer bugs and improved coding practices.
Security enhancements: Identifies and mitigates security vulnerabilities pre-emptively.
Maintainability: Reduces technical debt, yielding long-term development efficiency.
Customizable: Flexibility in configuration aligns with specific project needs.

Many industries implement SonarQube Server to uphold coding standards, maintain security protocols, and streamline their software development lifecycle. In sectors like finance and healthcare, adhering to regulations and ensuring reliable software is critical, making SonarQube Server invaluable. It is often integrated into CI/CD pipelines, ensuring that code changes meet set standards before deployment. This approach enhances productivity and maintains compliance with industry-specific requirements.

Sonar

Sample Customers

SAP, Mega International, Thales Alenia Space

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

January 2025

Free Report: Coverity vs. SonarQube Server (formerly SonarQube)

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